PILGRIM PAPERS 

FROM THE WRITINGS OF 

FBANCIS THOMAS WILFBID, PMEST 



ROBERT KEABLE 




Class 

Book 

GoRyiight'N! 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PILGRIM PAPERS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

A CITY OF THE DAWN 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 

STANDING BY 



E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



PILGRIM PAPERS 

FROM THE WRITINGS OF FRANCIS 
THOMAS WILFRID, PRIEST 



BY 
ROBERT KEABLE 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 



Copyright, 1921 
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



26 



BV3k 



Printed in the United States of America 



MAR 28 I92J 
©GI.A611350 



d 



TO 

SYBIL, 
A RESOLUTE PILGRIM 



" Friend, of my infinite dreams 
Little enough endures ; 
Little howe'er it seems 
It is yours, all yours. 

" Fame hath a fleeting breath ; 

Hopes may be frail or fond ; 
But Love shall be Love till death, 
And perhaps beyond" 

Arthur Christopher Benson. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Foreword ix 

1. Of Travellers and Travelling 1 

2. Of the Beasts at Ephesus 10 

3. Of the Ten Commandments 17 

4. Of God or Allah 28 

5. Of Wanting God 34 

6. Of a Sunday in the Mission 44 

7. Of Misunderstandings 56 

8. Of the Mission Pack-Saddle 66 

9. Of the Best in Life 74 

10. Of Aaron and Gamaliel 86 

11. Of a Village under the Moon 100 

12. Of the Love of God 108 

13. Of the Touching of the World In- 

tangible 115 

14. Of the True Riches 124 

15. Of the Shouting of the Sons of God . . 132 

16. Of the Bitter Cross 140 

17. Of Teresa 148 

18. Of Wilfrid 156 

19. Of Some Sick Visits 167 

20. Of the* Bishops' Prayers 175 

21. Of a Disputed Question 185 

22. Of the Cost of Missions 195 

23. Of a Mount of Temptation 203 

24. Of Relics and Friends 212 

25. Of Conclusions 221 

26. Of the Rainbow's End 230 

vii 



FOREWORD 



THERE were few, it is certainly fair to say, 
who knew Francis Thomas Wilfrid, of the 
Mission, as I knew him, and that very 
knowledge embarrasses me not a little in writ- 
ing any sort of foreword to these Papers. He 
confided them to me just before the end; and 
now that his day is done, and he will never 
speak or minister upon the Berg again, I feel 
that the time has come to make them public. 
These that he called therein "letters" were 
written chiefly on the last of his journeyings, 
as I know to my sorrow, for some, indeed, pen- 
cilled on scraps of paper in hut or camp, have 
been none too easy to decipher. To whom they 
were written was his secret, and is now mine. 
They are presented here substantially as he 
wrote them, and if I have deleted a sentence in 
one or two, he would not, I am sure, feel that 
I had done wrong. Such sentences seem to me, 
as I read them now, of too intimate a character 
for the general public; but I have not removed 
every personal touch. 

For it is by something of which that personal 
touch is a symbol that I think he would wish to 
be known or remembered. Wilfrid had many 



x FOREWORD 

faults in his ministry, faults which, indeed, he 
often deplored most deeply when he and I were 
alone, and of which I knew him to be very 
conscious when he knelt in the presence of 
Almighty God. He was erratic, hasty, too easily 
moved, and hardly ever steadily persistent 
enough in routine work to make a successful 
priest. But he was at least intensely sincere, 
and the natives, to whom he was called more 
especially to minister by the nature of the dis- 
trict, had a real place in his affection. He ever 
went to the altar bearing them in his heart as 
the high-priest of the old Law carried the names 
of the children of Israel on the golden and 
jewelled breastplate. And as for the Euro- 
peans, to whom he was mostly an eccentric 
enigma, it may certainly be said that he never 
regarded them as they too often thought he did. 
He despised no man's faith, if it were genuine; 
he resented no criticism, if it were just; but he 
found ignorant and bigoted hostility very hard 
to bear. Towards that he exhibited, more un- 
consciously than consciously it is true, a certain 
only half -veiled contempt, for which he himself 
was sincerely sorry again and again. He would 
say often in self-rebuke that under no circum- 
stances should a Christian ever be contemptuous 
of any one, that of all things contempt was most 
foreign to the mind of God. 

Thus, then, he was eager for friendship, in- 
tensely eager, and he rarely found it. If sym- 



FOREWORD xi 

pathetic understanding were offered to him in 
any measure lie responded, if anything, too 
readily, and in consequence laid himself open 
to more than one rebuff. But his longing to 
receive and to share human intimacy was the 
best thing in him, and it finds illustration in 
the occasional heart to heart language that I 
have spared in these letters. " Tread softly," 
he would doubtless have me quote, "for you 
tread on my dreams." 

This correspondence (if it should be so called) 
is, indeed, largely of the stuff of which dreams 
are made; but I trust no reader will lightly 
dismiss the substance of many of these Papers 
on that account. Thinking them singularly 
appropriate for more reasons than one, I have 
ventured to preface two lovely little verses by 
Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson, now Master of 
Magdalene College in the University of Cam- 
bridge. For there may be reality in dreams, 
and there are dreams of reality. In Wilfrid's 
letters I detect a good deal of both. At any rate, 
he sacrificed his life to his dreams, and a man 
can hardly set higher attestation than that to 
his faith that they are true. If too little endures 
of them, does he not herein offer all that there 
is to his friend! 

But, even considered as letters, it is plain to 
me that these are largely dream-letters, for they 
were not despatched through the post as they 
now stand and as Wilfrid committed them to 



xii FOREWORD 

my care. "Here," lie said as he gave them to 
me, "read these, will you? and edit them one 
day if you like. Say that they have indeed 
been written on the face of the Berg, the old 
Berg that has claimed the best part of my life; 
that they are true enough pictures of work and 
journeying there; and that I publish them be- 
cause I want to make an apologia and have 
no wit or learning to do it as some of my masters 
have done. They show what I thought and tried 
to do, and maybe, if you can arrange to print 
them, they will at last reach their destination. 
For, since they deal with heartfelt things, why 
should not heart cry to heart across a world?" 
I think it better not to write down all that I 
suppose him to have meant by that rather 
strange conclusion; besides, quite possibly that, 
too, was part of a dream. 

His words, however, when it is noticed how 
often they are repeated by him, suggest a title 
that I rather fancy he may have designed for 
this book. It is pre-eminently a book of "The 
Face of the Berg. ' ' But it is still more the book 
of a man, a personality, and I have preferred 
to indicate that that man was on a pilgrimage 
in more senses than one. How far he travelled 
as some may think God wished him to travel 
I shall not venture an opinion here, but I feel 
his descriptions of that journey are better called 
"Pilgrim Papers." 

Still it is, I think, open to me to say this: 



FOREWORD xiii 

that I can quite understand how he came to 
dream such letters on the face of that mighty 
Berg, whose world-message has not been at- 
tempted, so far as I know, before. Nothing 
more suggestive of reality as commonly under- 
stood can well be imagined than those wind- 
swept, sun-kissed, often snow- washed krantzes 
that tower up 10,000 feet and more towards 
God. It is no easy thing to travel on them. The 
stones of their poor and winding paths; their 
hardy, bleak clusters of reeds, thistles, moun- 
tain-grass, and scrubby bush; their fierce sun, 
blistering wind, and bitter cold in quick succes- 
sion; the rough living and primitive passions 
of the folk who shelter on them — all these are 
realities of earth, beyond doubt. Wilfrid was 
conscious enough of them, as his letters show, 
and yet it was there that he felt so keenly the 
mantle of the world intangible. And no wonder, 
for the very openness of the smile of some sunlit 
valley, or the stillness of some mist-wrapped 
peak, or the expectation that seems written on 
the great grass plains, reaching up in every 
flower and blade to Him Who bade them be, 
had but one meaning to the man who spent 
so much time there. "We are," he said to me 
once, "waiting in an antechamber, and there 
is silence among those that know, for they sus- 
pect that the curtain is about to be pulled aside, 
and that the Presence will step out among 
them." 



xiv FOREWORD 

Wilfrid longed, I know, for the drawing of 
that curtain while he was on the Berg, and more 
than expected that he would resolve the mys- 
teries of the Presence Chamber at the very least. 
An early letter expresses, with pathetic con- 
fidence, that hope. And he learned nrach, it is 
true, enough, indeed, to conceive himself justi- 
fied in taking a step indicated here. But at 
the end he expressed to me his conclusions char- 
acteristically, and in a moment of farewell that 
I am not likely ever to forget. I had gone out 
alone from the homestead in East Griqualand 
to meet him, and we were standing in the dying- 
day on the edge of a little green acacia spinney 
where a path ends at a gate so set that a watcher 
may see afar off the sunset lights on the great 
Basuto peaks. Wilfrid stood long gazing at 
them, and then turned to me with rather a wist- 
ful smile. ' ' The grand old Berg, ' ' he said, ' ' has 
chiefly taught me, after all, how to wait." 

He was right. At the very best we see through 
a glass darkly, till the day break and the 
shadows flee away. 

E. K. 
South Africa, 
1920. 

P. S. — I have to thank Mr. John Lane, who holds the 
copyright, for permission to print Mr. Arthur C. Benson's 
poem. 



PILGRIM PAPERS 



PILGRIM PAPERS 



1. OF TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING 

SOME people like journeys on the edge of 
things and into the unkown, and some 
people do not. I am one of those who do, 
and I find also a dreadful amusement in travel- 
ling with those who do not. So I could hardly 
fail to enjoy, my dear, this first stage towards 
the Berg. 

We left the city fairly early — at half-past 
seven — in a little composite train of coal trucks 
and live-stock waggons and passenger coaches, 
in which the greater number of us were natives. 
It was a perfect day, with the sun golden on the 
new- washed trees and fields, and we meandered 
slowly across the heart of Natal. At first Indian 
houses seemed to be everywhere, and Indian 
women, in their highly coloured wraps, were 
gay on the tiny stations and in the little settle- 
ments set among market gardens and wattle 
plantations. But as the proportion of veld to 
cultivated lands grew, and as we climbed over 
kopje after kopje, each a little higher than be- 
fore, the native huts increased. Towards mid- 



2 PILGRIM PAPERS 

day we were among the mountains, stretch on 
stretch and fold on fold, great grassy slopes and 
stone-strewn summits, with the white clouds 
chasing each other across them. Then not only 
were there natives, but natives to whom dress 
regulations became increasingly unimportant. 

Alas that they do not become entirely so ! A 
Zulu girl, her little fringe of beadwork about 
her waist, but otherwise naked and unashamed, 
who stands and looks at you straight as a lance 
and fearlessly, is a beautiful creature, but a girl 
in a ragged, dirty skirt that ends half-way to the 
knee, with a piece of old sacking pulled up to 
her throat and tied behind her neck like the top 
half of an apron, is neither decent in the conven- 
tional sense nor beautiful. Really the whole 
thing is an amazing comment on our civilisa- 
tion. They accuse missionaries in the books of 
dressing up the savage, and we have been, I 
suppose, dreadfully to blame, but, after all, mis- 
sionaries do dress their people more or less 
decently, and if the garments lack artistic merit, 
that is merely due to the fact that so few really 
pious missionaries have any sense of the beauti- 
ful. Their minds are astonishingly little. But 
it is the civilisation of the average farmer and 
trader and the petty Government regulation that 
has dressed these people so, and the mind behind 
that is not merely little : it is non-existent, or if 
existent, warped and futile beyond words. 

But this is a lamentable digression. I was 



OF TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING 3 

going to say that we came out into mountainous 
country that could easily be seen to be a rib 
of the world and might possibly have been mis- 
taken for the backbone. We wound tortuously 
up one side of a valley and as tortuously down 
the other. In one place we passed the back door 
of a cottage, and twenty minutes later came 
back and passed within a hundred yards of the 
front door. Wonderful vistas opened up at 
every turn, and sometimes one could glimpse 
the road to the heart of all but untamed hills. 
I was entranced; most of my companions slept. 
Before me a stout person lolled with his head 
on one side and his mouth so widely open that 
one could see the stopping in his back teeth. 
Such is the lord of the world in his off moments. 

Finally, after one o'clock we pulled in to the 
junction and centre of life in these parts. There 
must have been quite half a dozen houses, and 
there was a dining-room on the station. After 
a while my first train went on; a little later a 
second departed in another direction; and, 
finally, the one passenger coach of the train 
destined for me appeared. And thus, then, the 
thinning of my companions left me with the 
gentleman who does not like travelling on the 
edge of things. 

He was stoutish, and he opened fire by pulling 
his ticket from his pocket some time after the 
train had started and asking me pathetically if 
that was "all right" for the terminus. I can- 



4 PILGRIM PAPERS 

not think it was a reasoned action, only just 
the groping of a bewildered soul after any in- 
formation. I scrutinised it, and told him that 
I could see no reason why he should not arrive 
without further expense if he sat still, but as 
our train takes four and a half hours (with 
luck) to traverse forty-nine miles, I told him 
he must sit very still. On that he launched out. 
He had come from what the inhabitants of Lon- 
don would call the wilds (and in them he had 
lived most of his life), and he was actually 
going to the lone store in the heart of the 
Drakensberg to which I am also wending. But, 
in his judgment, he had come from civilisation, 
and was going, he was fast discovering, beyond 
the limit. It was really hard on the store, where 
we are all so intensely proper and law-abiding, 
natives and white men too, but I had to agree 
with him. He had no idea how to proceed when 
we reached rail-head, so I explained that some- 
how we must get on another stage to the little 
township and yet another on the morrow to the 
farm, and that then we must mount horses and 
climb to the 10,000-foot level and travel two 
days and sleep out at night under the stars. 
And he was not at all joyful at the prospect, 
as I was, but rather he all but wept. Still he 
was stoutish — perhaps I should say a shade more 
than stoutish — he was dressed in a city suit; 
and his luggage was contained in a trunk which, 
if not big, was at least impossible on horseback. 



OF TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING 5 

He collected himself at last. How were we 
to get over tlie miles from the station to the 
township, and where should we eat and sleep? 
I had not an idea, but I did know that the 
further you go, the more easy all these things 
become. It is a dreadful business going to 
Johannesburg: you must book a place in a train 
days beforehand, and you must secure accom- 
modation at an hotel in advance (and very 
likely these days you will not be able to do so), 
and you must pay; there is no doubt that you 
must pay. But at the ends of the earth any one 
will take you in, and every one is glad to see 
you, and no one is anxious to speed your de- 
parture. When I last arrived in London, I could 
not get a taxi or a cab for love or money, and 
when I had obtained one by sheer force of arms, 
I spent a small fortune trying to find a bed- 
room; but I was pretty sure a post-cart or a 
car would be waiting at the lonely little station 
under the Berg. They would not be waiting for 
us, true, but they would certainly be there for 
the mail. And if they were not, we could wait; 
they would come some time. 

Well, of course it all turned out as I had 
thought. We found a car waiting for the mail, 
and we were run out the dreaded miles in no 
more than an hour or so. The little town, 
marked by a few hundred trees on the veld, took 
us in and was glad, for we were ahead of last 
week's papers. Incidentally we now caught up 



6 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the telegram my friend had sent to the distant 
store eight days before, but that was a small 
matter. A boy came in from the farm for the 
mail, and he took out a note, so that in the morn- 
ing a buggy was waiting. And at the farm 
was Cyril with my horses, who had come down 
the day before from the towering peaks that 
lifted themselves so serenely into the burning 
blue. 

This sort of travelling, then, I love. One 
never quite gets over the surprise of it, even 
although it is always the same. In the city 
you name some place on the edge of the world 
and say you want to get there, and they shake 
their heads and pretend it cannot be done. You 
search for a map, and as like as not you cannot 
find your place. Finally you discover the 
farthest point known to civilisation on the road, 
and you go to it. And there you find a friend, 
and a roof, and a meal, and a welcome, and no 
surprise at all that you are there. I remember 
setting off to climb Kilimanjaro, or as much of 
it as I could. I could find no one who had done 
so, no one who knew what lay beyond rail-head 
even if one got there, no one who did not think 
the getting beyond and up all but impossible. 
And yet when I arrived I found a homestead 
nearly three-quarters of the way to the summit, 
with a charming, cultured, comfortable old Hun 
in a smoking cap and a velvet jacket, who had 
been there all the time. Possibly there are 



OF TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING 7 

places in which it would be otherwise, but I 
do not believe it. I have no sort of doubt that 
it would be perfectly easy to get to Papua, or 
Fiji, or Samarkand, or Timbuctoo, if one tried, 
and that at the far end there would wait a 
pleasant person, very glad to see you, with a 
cup of tea and a cigarette. 

It is possible that you will feel that this sort 
of thing spoils the romance of travel, but that is 
quite a mistake. It adds to the romance; it 
makes it into a fairy story, in short, for in every 
fairy story there is always an old woman by the 
side of the road or a beautiful prince in a palace 
to tell one what to do next. No amount of 
experience makes the discovery less of a sur- 
prise, however; it only gives a pleasurable hope 
to life. And it is so wonderful to find kindly 
and friendly humanity beyond the end of all 
the long roads. 

The most wonderful person I have ever met 
was a traveller who knew the secret of all this. 
This traveller had just completed an entirely 
solitary journey (with no more than a dozen 
1 'boys,' ' who were constantly changing along 
the road) up the Niger, through Hausaland, 
behind Lake Tchad, across unknown Central 
Africa, down by the great lakes, through Ger- 
man East Africa, to Zanzibar. The journey 
had taken some sixteen months, and cost less 
than £150 from Charing Cross to the Indian 
Ocean. No newspaper had written it up, and 



8 PILGRIM PAPERS 

no scientific, religions, or commercial ambition 
had inspired it. Nor has any account of it ever 
since, so far as I know, been given to the world. 
And I met the traveller the day after she arrived 
prettily dressed and taking afternoon tea! 

Possibly this will be a little more than yon 
can believe, but it is simply and strictly true. 
If the lady is alive, I hope she will pardon the 
liberty I take in writing of her, for I mnst tell 
you that she was an ordinary person, with quite 
a small income, who was suddenly released from 
home ties, and who there and then determined 
that, as there was no reason why she should 
sit at home, she would instead go afield in God's 
wonderful world. She did not call on Thomas 
Cook and Sons, Ltd., and arrange her journey; 
she did not pack all the things she would need; 
and she did not write to the papers. She simply 
took a map and decided to walk across Africa, 
and she took the things she could not get on 
without : salt, I think, and tea, and some needles, 
and a sketching block, and a change of clothes 
— oh, and matches. At Lagos they told her 
she was a fool ; at Sokoto they wanted to arrest 
her for a lunatic. But after that it was easy, 
and cannibal chief passed her on to naked 
savage with the inborn politeness (and super- 
stition) of the raw native. She did not even 
take a revolver, but, I think, some aspirin and 
quinine, for if you shoot brotherman anywhere 
in this wide world, it creates an unpleasantness, 



OF TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING 9 

and yon cannot get far, whereas if yon heal 
him, yon can go anywhere. Still even qninine 
is not really necessary; yon can heal most of 
his tronbles with a smile. 

I think yon hardly believe this as yon read it, 
bnt I assure yon it is trne. My experience has 
been singularly limited, bnt it is just the same 
so far as it goes. One of these days, perhaps, 
I shall be able to prove to you that I am right 
by setting off myself with a pipe, and a stick, 
and a haversack for Kordofan, or Bokhara, or 
Honolulu, and by writing you a little book of 
the ease and pleasantness of it. And do you 
know what it teaches me? I feel so sure that 
at the end, unencumbered by any of the super- 
fluities that people take en voyage, and un- 
hurried and serene, you and I will set off on the 
final journey over the edge of the known and 
find waiting for us a friendly smile and a place 
prepared. 



2. OF THE BEASTS AT EPHESUS 

AT long last I am back, my dear, where 
for these many days I have longed to be 
— longed to be, sometimes even when with 
you. We left the little farm of which I have 
written in the early dawn with the sun still cool, 
and we rode at first through the lands with the 
great chain ahead of us, a sheer rampart against 
the sky. The lands were green with the new 
mealies, and there was song in the air and al- 
most song in my heart. Then we struck the 
river, and we crossed and recrossed it, always 
up and up, through the aloe and the cactus and 
the sugar-bush of semi-tropical Natal, till the 
sun beat on us and we grew tired. There was a 
snake asleep in the path in one place, and only 
the river made music untiringly. And then the 
gorge narrowed until the great dark krantzes 
seemed as if they would fall on us, and at last 
we were climbing up on foot in and out of the 
tangled mountain bushes, with the tiny stream 
plashing and falling beneath them, and far 
above the infinite blue sky, so seeming pitiless. 
The last few yards always seem impossible, but 
we climbed over the lip of the pass and fell on 

10 



OF THE BEASTS AT EPHESUS 11 

the grass beyond at last. I scarcely looked back. 
I felt I knew what lay behind; the secret of the 
tangle is hid somewhere here ahead. 

Then, after a little, we mounted our horses. 
It is always wonderful, the first hour on the top 
of the Berg. The peaks ahead crowd each other 
in massed armies to the far horizon, and their 
valleys lie fold on fold. Grass, and grey stone, 
and blue sky, and a whispering wind — that is 
all. And so we rode till we came to this place, 
and Cyril knew that the tiny stony track ran 
down now 1,000 feet to the river, and that we 
had best sleep here. 

The packs and packhorses are to meet us on 
ahead, so our preparations to-night were simple. 
We off-saddled and turned the ponies loose to 
feed. We collected dried dung, native fashion, 
and made a fire for the cheer of it only, as we 
had nothing to cook or in which to boil water. 
Cold meat and bread, and a cup of water, and a 
pipe — after all, on a warm, fine evening up here 
what does one want more ? I smoked while the 
stars came out. Still far ahead was the purple 
haze into which from below it appears that one 
could almost climb ; but the stars seemed nearer. 
We sat under big boulders just off the path, 
and the wide valley sloped from our feet until 
it was lost in the press of lower hills beyond 
which the mountains rose again. There was no 
wind now, nor any sound at all, only the dying 
light, and the great far-stretching slopes, and 



12 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the brooding silence. In that silence it is as if 
one only just fails to hear the stars. 

Oh, but I am glad to be here once more! It 
is so good to feel infinitely little and to lie on 
the broad face of the wheeling earth powerless 
and still. Down below people, and sounds, and 
things jostle, and one has to be something to 
them all. One is always on guard. Even in the 
streets of the town the passers-by scan one's 
face as if to read it, and one has to pose. The 
brain is never still. It hears and questions each 
sound, and by its servants the senses looks, 
smells, selects, rejects, accepts, continually. I 
marvel that any one can think detachedly at all 
down there. But up here I am nothing — a little 
stone on an untrodden beach that is just lapped, 
and no more, by the tide of life. Man in all the 
centuries has done nothing to change the face 
of things up here, and it is possible to set in 
truer proportion his tiny works below. For all 
our knowledge, for all our binding and harness- 
ing of Nature, not otherwise does the world 
roll through space beneath these stars — itself 
smaller to the universe than even I to this Berg 
— than it rolled when the first savage looked out 
on the night. 

It is almost strange, after these weeks, to feel 
once more at peace. I have felt myself for so 
long the plaything of giants far stronger and 
more subtle than St. Paul's beasts at Ephesus, 
and the horror is that one has to wrestle with 



OF THE BEASTS AT EPHESUS 13 

them even when tired heart and weary brain 
crave for peace at any price. Love and religions 
controversy — they are giants, are they not? 
Well, here they meet their match. On the face 
of the Berg they appear as those tiny figures in 
the lands who dwindled and sank out of sight 
as we climbed and climbed and climbed. 

It is cnrious that they shonld so shrink away, 
and I wonder why. After all, I still love, and 
I still believe, and Love and Faith are still the 
two great facts of life. Bnt I suppose it is the 
isolation which robs them of their power to 
torment. We are so bound up down below in 
others and in affairs that we cannot love 
straightforwardly or believe straightfor- 
wardly. We have to consider what our 
loving and believing will mean to other 
people or have meant to them; we have to set 
ourselves either mentally or in fact against other 
people; we have to choose and reject among 
them. We cannot move in any direction with- 
out treading on some one's toes. But up here 
Love and Eeligion cannot fight in me except 
with God, and one does not ultimately, you 
know, fight with God. Sometimes, in pitiful 
fury, one strikes a blow at Him, just as I have 
lost my temper before now with the Berg and 
kicked out at the turf! But one does not dash 
oneself to pieces against it. After all, even that 
would not be a fight, for I suppose it takes two 
to fight. 



14 PILGRIM PAPERS 

I expect that death will be rather like this: 
in life the clash of struggle, the false propor- 
tions, the distracted thinking; all through life 
the ever more weary and painful climbing, and 
all through life the growing sense of the slip- 
ping away of the importance of the world; and 
then at last, with the last breaths and the sense 
that we can no more, the throwing of oneself 
down upon the stretch of eternity, and the con- 
sciousness that after all nothing matters except 
the settling of these issues with God and that 
He is really far too big for the word " settle' ' 
to be used at all. And then probably it will 
grow very dark for a while, only the more dark 
it grows, the more clear will shine the stars, 
until they dim before the dawn. And in the 
dawn we shall arise refreshed and look out on a 
new world. 

Ah well, it may be so, but the climb still lies 
ahead; this is only the picture of it. It is only 
that on the face of the Berg one may have some 
quieting vision of the end. And the vision that 
I would pass to you is that you must not allow 
yourself to be deafened or blinded by the noise 
and the glare down below. Have you ever tried 
to break through the surf to the broad sea? 
If you have, you know that one has to keep 
a steady head, and not suffer the turmoil to 
daunt one. Breathe warily; close eyes as the 
wave breaks, and open them afterwards; put 
power into the stroke at the right moment, and 



OF THE BEASTS AT EPHESUS 19 

never lose resolve; and you are through. So 
it is with life, and with these only two big things 
that life holds. Why, I have thought in despair 
that we were doomed to die beneath them, and 
that the only concern that mattered was to see 
that one died fighting, face forward; but I know 
differently now. A man may win through. He 
may come undaunted unto God. 

Yet of course you must not think that I feel 
as I lie in my blanket on this turf that I have 
done with Love or Eeligion; on the contrary, I 
have come here to settle these affairs — if one 
can ever settle them. The curious thing is, 
however, that now I can, as it were, hold them 
at arm's length and look at them almost dispas- 
sionately. I feel that here I may learn some- 
thing of the secret of both, and perhaps arrive 
at some definite philosophy which shall help me 
to be master of them. I want to see if I can 
get to any apprehension of what Love really is ; 
of how it stands in relation to physical passion; 
of what one is to do in the dreadful muddle that 
the entry of Love seems nine times out of ten to 
make of life, for it will come imperiously in and 
command (or at least allure) to revolutionary 
things. Love is such a two-edged thing. It 
seems to me that more often than not the love 
of any two persons means bliss to them, but 
agony to others. If it is so, then this Love is 
a strange, ravening thing, and maybe our fore- 
fathers did wisely to seek to tie it down by 



16 PILGRIM PAPERS 

conventions and proprieties and shibboleths. 
But what in the world did they do with their 
hearts, do you suppose 1 I think, those Victorian 
folk must have cramped their children's hearts 
from the start, like the Chinese women their 
babies' feet, that they should have succeeded in 
arriving at such apparent placidity. However, 
enough of that. 

And then there is Religion. I have to come 
to a conclusion in these months, as you know, 
and it is on the face of the Berg that I shall 
come to it. I write " have to come," for it is 
just that. There comes a time in life when one 
must act on the trend of the years or never act 
at all. At any rate, it cannot be right to drift 
into a form of faith, and ultimately stereotype 
in it from sheer inertia. Better, I think, to act 
on one's honest judgment and have to retrace 
one's steps later on than not act at all. 

My candle-end is burning out, and I want to 
make haste and extinguish it. Then the dark- 
ness will take me on its breast, and not wall me 
in as it does with this flicker by my side, and 
it will seem to me that I am part of the velvet 
dusk and silence and can swim out on it, even 
to you. 



3. OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 

THE day before yesterday I was ten and 
a half lonely hours in the saddle on trek, 
and yesterday I did what you would least 
expect in the mountains — I spent a whole day 
browsing among novels. And so to-day I have 
got to write it all for you. 

Ten and a half hours in the saddle, without 
even Cyril to talk to, gives one time for reflec- 
tion, and yet it is extraordinarily little reflec- 
tion that I find I can do in the saddle. I must 
say that I do not think much of that noble beast, 
the horse, when it comes to journeying. There 
is nothing more delightful than a couple of 
hours on a fresh horse for the sake of the exer- 
cise, but that is one thing; it is altogether an- 
other to have to get somewhere a good way off 
in the mountains and to have to do it on horse- 
back. My horses are nearly always tired, too, 
poor beasts. One jogs slowly along, for the 
ground makes even a canter impossible for 
hours at a time, and the best pace is one peculiar 
to our country, a kind of half -trot, half-walk, 
beloved of the native, which certainly gets one 
over the miles, but at some expense to mind and 
body unless, one is used to it. Personally, I 

17 



18 PILGRIM PAPERS 

always discover in the mountains that I am a 
dreadfully civilised person. Pace haunts me. I 
spend the hours unrestfully in. a futile effort not 
to miss the advantage of a dozen yards of flat, 
and dreaming of motor cars. 

But the curious thing is that the day after 
such a ride I invariably find how much it has 
done to sort one's ideas, so to speak. On this 
trek, for example, I rode first across the high 
plateau, with mile on mile of sparse grass and 
small rocks on either hand and the great blue 
bowl over all. Possibly I met three natives in 
six hours, and I think I saw a dozen horses and 
a couple of dozen sheep — oh, and a hawk or two. 
On both sides and far ahead stretched the 
rounded shoulders of more and more moun- 
tains, with great shadows that hinted of the 
deep valleys between. And then at last I 
reached the one I was to follow, and descended 
the tiny stony trail, all but lost here and there, 
to the minute stream that grew with every mile, 
and finally flowed into the Orange within a few 
miles of the store. Hour after hour I followed 
it, in and out of its stony bed, among the flowers 
and long grass to which its water gives life, 
often with the high cliffs through which it has 
cut its way towering up to left and right, and 
towards evening blocking out the sun. 

There is music in such a valley, the music of 
the singing, crystal-clear river, and the noise of 
little birds among the rocks. Once a wild duck 



OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 19 

got up from the reeds a few yards away, and 
now and again the mountain sheep came down 
to drink. In the solitude one's thoughts wan- 
der, and one notices little things and questions 
them half irritatingly. It is only if I have not 
to think of the way lest I miss it, as one so 
easily can, and have not to remember to "push" 
lest the dark overtake me far from a meal, that 
I can think consecutively. 

Yet, as I have said, one finds in the end that 
one's thoughts are clearer. I suppose the 
monotony of it rests the brain. And I think, 
still more, that to be alone for hours on the 
breast of Nature, especially in these wild and, 
on the whole, barren solitudes, is to tell how 
trivial the petty things are that make up life 
down below, and to allow them to sink out of 
sight. 

So, then, at sunset, I reached the store. No 
visitor had been tkere since I said good-bye five 
months before, and although there was no doubt 
as to the sincerity and kindliness of the wel- 
come, still it amused me again, as always, to see 
how nonchalantly they took my coming. Men 
who live much alone in these mountains do not 
run to the windows to see who in the world is at 
the door, as dwellers in Suburbia do with a 
dozen callers a day. Mallont was tinkering at 
something over by the stable, and I rode up and 
got off and called a boy, and partly off-saddled, 
before he came up slowly to give me a real grip 



20 PILGRIM PAPERS 

of a hand-shake and his slow smile. Day after 
day the immemorial mountains and the brood- 
ing silences when the packs have left that ride 
the wool and grain, and the station is deserted 
save for the dogs and horses and a few boys, 
have steadied that man's mind. A man that can 
stick ten years up here without making a brute 
of himself with liquor or women is a man. He 
is rarely a Radical and never a Socialist, and 
yet it is impossible to think of caste in connec- 
tion with him. He fights a lone hand. He is 
master, on the face of the Berg that has sub- 
dued the lords of creation these untold cen- 
turies. Where the native builds his frail hut 
and but scrapes the soil and leaves no memory, 
he takes his stand and wrests his own from the 
grip of Nature. A curse on your cities in the 
plain that drag him back in the end nine times 
out of ten to batten on his blood ! 

The day after, I rested my pony, and sat in a 
deck chair within reach of his book-shelves. 
There are up here, of course, men who read 
nothing — at least, not exactly up here, because 
there is nobody else up here at all but in similar 
circumstances. But Mallont is not like that. 
True, there are vastly more novels on his 
shelves than anything else, but far be it from 
me to decry the novel. At any rate, I can always 
depend on finding the latest on his shelves, and 
nearly always a book or two as well that I have 
been waiting these many months to read. So 



OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 21 

yesterday I lit my pipe and put the tobacco 
handy, and gave myself up to a long day's 
browse. 

I wonder if you know what it is to "browse.' ' 
Curiously enough, one rarely does down below. 
The day is always overloaded with things to be 
done, and if one reads, one picks up the last 
novel from the library and reads it steadily for 
an hour or so. Yesterday, now, I had positively 
nothing else to do. My body was comfortably 
tired with the trek of the day before, and my 
mind had been swept by the wind and the sun. 
A hundred volumes stood within reach, and I 
had mood and opportunity to judge and reject. 

Among a random hundred modern novels, 
then, up here, one does indeed reject. It struck 
me, as I sat there lazily, that a trek in these 
mountains would be a good test for the authors 
of them. I imagine most of them would be 
unutterably bored and excessively helpless, and 
would be returned, as from a nightmare, as 
quickly as possible — to write more novels. 
There are exceptions among the novels, of 
course, the exceptions being those which you 
feel have been written by authors who have 
seen at first hand some phase of life, and have 
learnt its grim lesson, and have had to write of 
it. It is the way in which such a lesson is writ- 
ten up in a novel in these days that is new more 
than the lesson itself. If I were to criticise, I 
should say that the weakness of such a method 



22 PILGRIM PAPERS 

of dealing with life lies in the character-draw- 
ing. It is so often wholly impressionist. The 
circumstances of life are often drawn in boldly 
and truly, but the men and women who move 
among them strike one as distorted more fre- 
quently. One side of them is put under the 
magnifying glass, and the rest diminished out 
of sight. But there, possibly it has to be so. 

The great mass, however, are varyingly told 
tales that one knows to be but tales. Of such 
I like best, I must say, the novels that are quite 
obviously tales, and not the novels that read 
as if the author were trying to work out the 
plot in terms of real life. A tale is a tale, and 
to be told it need not fight shy of coincidences 
and impossibilities. It sets out to amuse for 
an hour or two, and that is all one asks of it. 

I read somewhere the other day that this was 
the true novel, and I think it was the West- 
minster Gazette that described the other as the 
deadliest form of tract. So the serious novel 
may be; but it is also the modern sermon and 
philosophical or religious essay. Nor can I see 
why it should not be so; indeed, I wish those 
others would call themselves tales and not 
novels. A man may well write tales to earn 
his bread-and-butter and to amuse, he being 
your modern troubadour; and it is a good 
calling. But I would have that if a man write 
a novel he writes because the Spirit has fallen 
upon him, and he must needs prophesy in the 



OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 23 

true sense of that word. After all, it is we 
professional prophets who have invented that 
deadliest and driest of prophetical mediums, 
the modern sermon. Those old firebrands of 
religions history, from the Hebrew prophet to 
the mediaeval friar, did not disdain parable and 
story, the circumstances of the hour, the tongue, 
wit, sarcasm, and invective of the people. But 
the modern preacher continues to base his 
moralities on the Old Testament stories and the 
Mosaic Code, while the modern novelist bases 
his on the reason and judgment of men to-day, 
whose eyes look out on the new world that 
Science has opened up, and on the Divorce 
Court. 

That is the real problem before us all. Is 
Moses a back number, or is he not? Is Leviticus 
Divine revelation, or is it primitive folk-lore? 
It is customary with many of us parsons to 
pretend that it is both, but I am wondering if 
we can do so truly. It might be, of course. 
Almighty God speaks in divers tongues and 
manners, and He might have spoken through 
selected folk-lore. But even if He did, we 
moderns require a modern medium if we are to 
hear and understand. 

The major part of these novels, for example, 
are of Love and Passion, and they well may be. 
Passion, at any rate, is a fundamental and 
universal law — I mean of course sexual passion, 
the desire to mate. It is a hard law, I think, 



24 PILGRIM PAPERS 

a monstrous, ravening, horribly subtle thing. 
Nature would seem to fling decencies to the 
winds to accomplish that supreme purpose of 
hers. She will use any artifice, any enticement, 
to bring it about ; she will murder, lie, and cheat 
to breed. Read Henri Fabre, and see her at it 
in the insect world ; read any true modern novel, 
and see her at it among men. You know 
"Passion and Pot-Pourri," don't you? You 
remember the tale of the millionairess on ' i One 
Libertine Afternoon"? "I am twenty-nine, 
you know ... we realise that not only shall we 
love again . . . but , . . again and again . . . 
Love passes away so soon . . ." she said. 

Three-quarters of the novels are based on 
that, and one dreads lest it be hideously true. 
The man and the woman are kept blind by our 
slave-mistress until she has achieved her object. 
They are attracted, dazzled, carried away. 
They even drag their souls in, and whisper of 
God and eternity in the half-lights. A far-off 
gramophone sings to them . . . "God gave you 
me . . ."as they sit out together in the moon- 
light under the trees, and its voice is clearer 
than that of God on Sinai. And they mate, and 
later wonder why. Of course the amazing thing 
is that no man in love will believe what I have 
just written, no matter how many times he has 
been disillusioned; and if he believes it now 
because he is not in love, he will not believe it 
as soon as he is. To tell you the truth, my dear, 



OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 25 

I do not believe it myself. Or do I? I hardly 
know. Up here, out here, I see the iron law 
as clear as the daylight, but if I believed that 
there was no more in love than this, I would 
wish myself dead ; indeed, I think I would curse 
God and die. Amazing, isn't it? And quite 
possibly that is all another trick ! 

But let us suppose, now, that both things are 
true, that we are animal enough to be in the 
grip of this ravenous beast called Nature to our 
own deception and undoing, but spiritual 
enough to have it in us to love in its deep sense 
as well as lust. Love is then the supreme 
achievement of life. Let us not fear that, for 
Love is of God. We may see and serve God in 
Love. What then? Well, Love will be infinitely 
bigger than the begetting of children, though it 
may involve that. It appears to me that Love 
might quite truly not wish that, although it is so 
horribly hard to disentangle the two, as a con- 
sequence, if not as an aim. But is it, then, to be 
the supreme dictator when it truly comes, burst- 
ing through the Ten Commandments of social 
protection with a snap of the fingers? 

I could feel so. Take the seventh. Here are 
a man and a woman trapped by Nature into a 
marriage by the false lights of what was pas- 
sion, but which they once thought was love. And 
then love and a third enter in. If love is, indeed, 
the supreme achievement, life for the two is a 
barren, wasted thing, and for the third it will 



26 PILGRIM PAPERS 

never be achieved, if they keep all the Com- 
mandments. 

There seems to me to "be only one possible line 
of thought if one would escape from the di- 
lemma, the quagmire, the very social instabili- 
ties, into which the abandonment of the Com- 
mandments would lead. It lies in the frank 
recognition that love won or thwarted, happi- 
ness or pain, success or failure, the populating 
of the globe or the cessation of human life upon 
it, are but secondary affairs after all. They are 
so many obstacles in the race, so many tem- 
porary furnishings to be assessed at that value. 
The only object of man's existence will be God. 
If he put Nature wholly on one side, like the 
monk, he must do it for God; if he submit to 
Nature, he must do it for God. If he hope to 
walk hand in hand with another towards that 
Goal, good : let him try so to walk ; but he must 
remember that to reach the Goal is his object, 
and not the walking hand in hand, and that, if 
the latter prove a delusion, he must go on, alas ! 
not alone, but in uncongenial company. 

This seems a hard solution, does it not? 
There are moods in which I can feel that it is 
not as hard as it seems, moods in which I can 
believe that God alone is love. Even then I 
am not a believer that all else is evil, for it may 
be that we find other things in God, provided 
we seek Him first, and understand that, if we 
seem to lose the riches of life for His sake, they 



OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 27 

are not really lost at all. But, whatever my 
mood, I am certain of this — and this is where 
I feel with your modern novelists and the pup- 
pets whose strings they pull — such a solution 
must have more authority behind it than the un- 
supported law of Deuteronomy. If I should see 
God and hear His Voice in my own tongue and 
age, then would I sacrifice (if He asked it) even 
you to Him; but if not, then would I take you 
in my arms though the laws of Israel and of 
social England stood twenty times as strongly 
in the way, though I dreaded lest jade Nature 
mocked at me again, 



4. OF GOD OB ALLAH 

I MUST say I love a few days here at the 
store. Mallont is such a good fellew. In 
a way he reminds me of many of the boys in 
the War, he is so good-natured, unselfish, gen- 
erous, and straight. We are good friends, and 
yesterday, when the store closed, we took rods 
and walked out of the front door to the river, 
scarce a hundred yards away, to fish. There 
is a wide, deep pool just behind the house, with 
high rocks on one side, and I sat perched up 
there and watched the sunset glow higher up 
the valley, and the deepening colours, till, as 
the first stars came out, we walked back. Sup- 
per was ready in the lighted room, but we stood 
for a few minutes on the stoep in the deep 
silence. There is little water in the river, and 
it simply murmured through the night as it ran 
under the high kraatzes in the horse-shoe bend 
in which the store stands. On the unenclosed 
side the mountain slopes up to the sky-line, and 
there a high wind was blowing little clouds 
across the face of the moon. 

After supper we sat and talked, and talked 
on the big things, too. It's a strange world! 
Here is Mallont, right out of civilisation, and 

28 



OF GOD OR ALLAH 29 

out of it now for many years, an independent, 
strong man, not given, one would think, to 
making concessions to propriety. Yet he is 
ten times more conventional than I. He accepts 
the social and moral order, and quite admittedly 
without what I should call a principle behind it. 
I tried to work off on him what I wrote to you 
the other day, and it interested him. But he 
was quite firm. Leviticus, he was sure, had 
made a mistake over the Deceased Wife's 
Sister, and if the Church condemned Divorce in 
toto, at whosoever 's direction, there was a blun- 
der somewhere; but until divorce had been ob- 
tained (and it was much better not sought) a 
woman was apparently the private property of 
her husband, and mistakes should be endured 
without rhyme or reason, even to the blighting 
of two lives. 

My protest led, of course, easily to religion, 
and we discussed all kinds of things, from Con- 
fession to the Pope. He is very downright. 
"If I took religion," he said, "I'd go the whole 
way. I wouldn't take the Sacrament on Sunday 
and do a nigger down for a tihJci on Monday. 
But I don't think I shall. There is no life in the 
Church, and it doesn't seem to me that religion 
makes a man any better. My creed is, 'Do to 
every man as you would be done by, and leave 
the rest to God.'" 

I was silent for a while. What was one to 
say? It sounds so easy in the theological study, 



30 PILGRIM PAPERS 

and I suppose the saintly evangelical fathers 
would have an answer ready. It was the 
thought of them that made me put a question. 
"What about sin?" I said. "If you feel it is 
too great a thing to meet a forgiving God in 
Communion, what about the meeting that's 
bound to. come at the end? If He sent His Son 
and made a plan for salvation, how will you 
answer Him when He wants to know why you 
neglected it?" 

He flicked the ash off his cigarette and 
smiled. "I reckon I shall say that I never 
asked to be put into this world. I was shoved 
in unconsciously, and I found it too big a mud- 
dle for me. I did my best ; I couldn't do more. " 

Now, you know, there is a challenge in that. 
"I never asked to be put into this world." I 
wonder what you think of that. Again, it's an 
easy question — or an easier than the last — in 
the study, but when a man puts it to you 
straight and wants a practical, and not a theo- 
logical, answer, what then? It seemed to me 
that the great, silent, enduring, age-long moun- 
tains all about waited for the answer. You 
cannot talk clap-trap with those listeners. 
After all, has God the right to make a man 
against or without his will ? A man — a thing of 
brain and nerve and passion, the heir of cen- 
turies of hereditary impulse, the sport of 
Nature, the slave of environment, and yet the 
restless, brooding, masterful being that is half 



OF GOD OR ALLAH 31 

a God himself — has God a right to make him 
without his wish, and will He have the right to 
damn him because he has blundered and found 
things too hard? 

"But you enjoy life," I said. "Even the 
fellow most to be pitied rarely wants to throw 
away the gift. And if he does, owing to the 
misery of his present circumstances, he would 
admit to days and hours of too high value for 
estimation. And if you had a child, a mere 
baby, and I offered to place ten thousand 
pounds for it in the Bank, to accumulate until 
it was twenty-one, would you refuse on the 
ground that the child was unconscious of so 
great a gift, which at twenty-one might possibly 
bring about his ruin?" 

"I should not," he said. "But if the boy 
inherited a weakness for alcohol, and your for- 
tune worked his ruin, whose fault would it be?" 

I fear I nearly gave it up, but then I had an 
idea. "It's no answer," I said, "but it seems 
to me that what is really wrong with your 
question is something much more fundamental 
than all this. You have a wrong idea of God, 
and you will think in terms of Law and Com- 
mandment and Punishment. Almighty God 
is to you the unattractive Ruler of the Universe. 
He is all but Allah. But that is not God at all. 
God is all Goodness, Love, Beauty, Manliness, 
Striving, Joy, Satisfaction, Honour, Attain- 
ment, Reward. If you could see Him, you 



32 PILGRIM PAPERS 

would desire Him passionately. It will be 
heaven to serve Him in the fulness of our man- 
hood. If you refuse Him, He will not damn 
you; you will merely deprive yourself of all 
that is fine and good. In refusing God you are 
refusing all that you like in any man you hon- 
our, all that you desire in any woman you truly 
love. He has made no rigid commandments; 
He has set you no hard task ; He has but given 
you life that you may run to Him, and He has 
but set up warning sign-posts lest you go 
astray. ' ' 

Mallont nodded silently. "That's fine," he 
said, "but what would the Church say to all 
that?" 

"The Catholic Church," said I, "is the 
revelation of God. So was Jesus Christ, and 
the two are one. In her you can see Him. ' ' 

"Can you?" he queried sarcastically, under- 
standing only my second sentence, I think. 
"All that I can say is that the world doesn't 
see that, and I have never heard the Church 
speak as you spoke just now." 

And I too was silent then as the minutes 
passed. Then, with a flicker of passion, 
"Padre, if I could see God's Face like that, He 
should have all my strength ! " he said. 

I looked at him. He has been a brick to me, 
tender as a woman once, when I was badly 
smashed up and in agony, a good friend always. 
He and I know little of each other's past, for 



OF GOD OR ALLAH 33 

men do not often confide that, and possibly we 
each wonder of the other what eddy washed us 
into this backwater of the stream of life. So 
I know very little, and yet I think I judged 
aright. "Mallont," I said, "you will surely 
see Him one day. And then remember me. ' ' 

Across the table he held out his hand. 

# # # * * 

But, my dear, am I right, or am I wrong, and 
last, but not least — for it involves honour — am 
I orthodox? And ought I to sit here in this 
uniform? Oh, that you could give me an an- 
swer ! There are times when I hate these silent 
mountains. 



5. OF WANTING GOD 

I WISH you could see me now. I am spread 
out on the floor of a mud hut, writing by 
candle-light, and I am going to describe the 
hut minutely, for I have just been wandering 
around taking measurements. It's a big hut, 
round, and five paces in diameter. The door 
is nearly six feet high, and the top of the roof 
perhaps nine. The walls are of stone outside 
and mud within, the floor stamped mud, the 
roof smoke-blackened thatch and poles. There 
is no window, no chimney, no fireplace, no fix- 
tures, except a hole in the mud reaching to the 
stone, about two feet long and six inches wide, 
that does duty as a small shelf. 

Half the circle of the wall is taken up with 
grain bags; next to them, on sacks, is a dead 
sheep, spread out and skinned; next to it my- 
self, also spread out, but on my blankets and 
valise, and writing to you; next to me are my 
saddles — my own, Cyril's, and the pack; and 
next to them is the door, with the grain starting 
again beyond it. You can reach the top of the 
wall, where the thatch starts, with your hand, 
and this makes another shelf, while the roof 
poles are convenient pegs. Hanging up, then, 

34 



OF WANTING GOD 35 

or stuck into tlie thatch, or resting on the shelf, 
are various objects: skeins of grass rope; a 
broken knife; a spoon; a Tower musket, very 
rusty; a collection of my hostess's skirts; an 
old military coat; two spears; a goat-skin, not 
very completely cured; a few books, very 
ragged; empty tins; empty bottles; a few of 
the same with unknown and unrecognisable con- 
tents; a pair of boots; the skin of a dead calf, 
tied up at the legs to make a sack; a woven 
grass bag of native tobacco; a gnarled stick; 
an ancient umbrella ; and a decayed toothbrush. 
And then there is the furniture : a kitchen chair, 
with the back gone and one leg mended with 
wire, and a crucifix. This, my dear, is a true, 
literal, and veracious description of my present 
lodgings. 

In the train coming up I met a man who was 
deploring the high cost of living. I told him 
that I expected to live on about £5 a month 
for the next six months. He hardly believed 
it, but it is true. And, after all, I wonder some- 
times why one does not remain for ever as I 
am to-night. It is quite as comfortable in this 
valise on the floor as in a bed; what is the use 
of a dining-room suite? and I am as contented 
physically, having dined off mealiemeal por- 
ridge, native bread, a couple of chops that Cyril 
hacked from the sheep an hour ago, and tea, 
as if I had dined in the Royal Hotel, Durban. 
Moreover, this hut is quite clean, and so am 



36 PILGRIM PAPERS 

I, really. True, I could do with a wash, but 
the dirt is merely clean earth dirt, and I'm 
shaved. I am, really. I always do. And if my 
clothes are a bit old, after all, they answer all 
practical purposes. 

Yet I am anything but content in my soul. 
I have been out, wandering up and down under 
the stars, thinking, thinking, always thinking, 
as if thinking did any good. My mind is full 
of the sort of criticism that men pour out on 
missions and on religion generally, and I cannot 
get away from it. I met the other day a man 
back from the War, and from adventures up and 
down India, Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. 
I cannot explain exactly why, but his talk hurts. 
He had seen what was said to be the most 
debased Christianity in the world; he reckoned 
the most religious people were undoubtedly 
Mohammedan: what Christians get up regularly 
at 5 a.m. to say their prayers? He burst — or 
tried to burst — a good many bubbles, such as 
Armenian atrocities, by telling story after story 
of the thievish, murderous, immoral character 
of the Armenians he had met; and, without 
saying so, he gently hinted that all religions or 
no religion were much of a muchness provided 
a man played the game. 

Then the talk veered on Spiritualism and the 
after-life, which is debated as if Christ had 
never risen from the dead, with the conclusion 
that after all it does not matter, for if we rise 



OF WANTING GOD 37 

from the dead, we rise, and if we do not, we 
do not, and it will not matter much provided 
a man has — and all the rest. 

I wonder if yon can guess the effect all this 
has on my mind. I hardly know how to express 
it, but I think I might put it in this way. The 
great religious problem of the world is that 
modern men believe that they have proved that 
they can get on quite as well without orthodox 
religion as with it. A man says his prayers; 
he gives up saying them; and there is no differ- 
ence. He lives his life; he has his pleasures, 
his worries, his anxieties, his successes; and 
Christ has no place in them. Your modern man 
does not want Christ. He gets on perfectly well 
without Him. 

The realisation of this tears me to pieces, so 
to speak. I ask myself, Who is to blame — the 
Church, the man, or Christ ? Is it to be expected, 
and if so, why? And up against it is the fact 
that the native finds a use for religion, and 
as for me, well, I am a man too, and I cannot 
get away from it. 

The native wants religion. Some say it does 
not improve him; some say he wants it merely 
to get on; some say he pretends to want it to 
cheat us; but all that is rubbish. The last two 
sentences may be true of some; the first may 
be true of more, and even of many in the sense 
in which it is used, for it comes to mean that 
religion tends to spoil a native from the white 



38 PILGRIM PAPERS 

man's point of view: it makes him less subser- 
vient, less slavish in his estimation of himself, 
less satisfied with having small prospects and no 
racial future. And all power to his elbow there ! 
I say frankly. 

But the native wants religion. A man will 
not pay, surfer, labour, for a thing he does not 
want. Not all, of course, do these things for 
religion, but many do, and more would if we 
missionaries did not tend to spoon-feed them. 
And for myself, I honestly believe it is just due 
to this : the soul of the native is being awakened, 
and a soul awakened turns naturally to God. 

The trouble with your white man is twofold. 
In the first place, he does few things naturally, 
and least of all his thinking. He no longer 
grows like a flower and opens up to the sun. He 
starts so as a child, but then conventions, and 
civilisations, and other people's ideas, and the 
realisation of his mastery of so much, come in, 
and he ceases to be natural. If the stars and 
the mountains and the spring cry to him of God, 
he says to himself: " Don't be a fool — remember 
Evolution, Science, Darwin"; and he pours him- 
self out a whisky and soda instead of falling on 
his knees. If he falls in love, he keeps a tight 
hand on himself unless the prospects are good, 
and he gratifies his passion in the meantime 
with precaution. He is born a child still, but 
he is made a cynic. 

But the one thing that might save him is not 



OF WANTING GOD 39 

there. Oh, my dear, why is it that the living 
Christ, the power of the Spirit, the passion of 
God for souls, never seize on him and rock his 
soul to its foundation till he cries out: "Depart 
from me!" or else "Inflame me!" one or the 
other, but either in an agony? Why is it that 
he does not feel the hand of this terrible God 
of ours in all its relentless power? "Why is it 
that he does not either surrender entirely or 
sin daringly? Why is it that he is such a 
craven — for it comes to that — such a slave both 
in his petty sins and in his arm-chair disbeliefs ? 
Well, I will tell you : it is because of me, and 
of such as me, and because we have allowed the 
supernatural in religion to drop out of count. 
We have set ourselves a low standard, for we 
are content to be saved. To put it theologically, 
as long as we feel we are in a position to be 
"justified" at the last day, sanctification does 
not matter much. We live moderately within 
the law, and go to Church, and take the Sacra- 
ments, but we do not fling our whole souls, like 
reckless gamblers, into the attainment of God. 
We do not want to lose our lives that we may 
find them. My friend is perfectly right in a 
way even over his Mohammedans. There are, 
of course — I know it — plenty of Christians who 
get up at 5 a.m. to say their prayers; but the 
majority do not. We are content if we say them 
at all. We have whittled everything down to 
the finest edge of distinction between our miser- 



40 PILGRIM PAPERS 

able Christianity and paganism, and it is only 
we who can see the line of demarcation at all. 
The world at large never dreams, from observa- 
tion of us, that the Beatitudes are the ideals 
of the religion of Christian men any longer. 

We Catholics are worse than the Protestants. 
After all, Catholicism is far more an obviously 
supernatural religion than Protestantism, and 
it is far more other-worldly. It is only a 
"rational" faith at all provided you accept first 
an hypothesis of faith. The Catholic Sacra- 
ments are daring and daily claims to be 
miracles, the practice of the ordinary Catholic 
faith a commonplace assertion of the reality of 
the other world. Protestantism might be made 
other-worldly; it was by the Quakers and the 
Puritans (although their presentation of things 
was not a good advertisement of that other 
world) ; but modern Protestantism at any rate, 
with its educational basis of an intelligent read- 
ing of difficult MSS. and its Jewish synagogue 
worship, wears no such dress. I never, there- 
fore, blame the average Englishman for his 
materialistic outlook, any more than one can 
blame a modern society child for not believing 
in fairies and Father Christmas. The English- 
man honestly thinks that the belief in survival 
either rests on a dubious and ancient account 
of Our Lord's Resurrection, or on Spiritualism, 
instead of which it rests for the Catholic on the 
knowledge that the risen Jesus is to hand in 



OF WANTING GOD 41 

the Tabernacle on the altar of every church and 
has been actually seen in every age, down to 
last year, by His disciples. 

But to come back to my point : I am so dread- 
fully conscious that I do not live as if I believed 
this, and that I do not spend my days in a real 
attempt to see God for myself. All that aban- 
don, passion, madness, heroism, of the Saints, 
belongs solely to the Saints. But I ought to 
show it. Why, then, do I not! 

Ah, the sorrowful answer! " Suffer me first 
to go and bury my father!" "He went away 
grieved because he had great possessions!" 
Thank God, my dear, that it was not you who 
had a hand in writing such sentences of doom 
across my life! But it is that, is it not? and 
with most of us. Do you know, I am so con- 
scious of it up here on the Berg. I trek up 
and go to the Store. I am full of zeal when 
I arrive. At the Store I do not deny Christ, 
of course, but I, too, whittle things down to the 
fine edge. No one would call the Store luxury, 
but it is by contrast to this hut and my life 
in this hut. There I have food on a white cloth 
and plenty of tools to eat it with, there a cup 
of tea and a cigarette before breakfast several 
mornings a week, there novels and a sun-downer 
and a chat with good old Mallont. It is all 
right; I am still "justified." But then I come 
out to the native village. I am a priest all the 
time; in weariness, painfulness, hunger, thirst, 



42 PILGRIM PAPERS 

and even boredom, I do serve God; I become 
poor and live the life of my "brethren" that 
I come to save. At first I have to make an 
effort to do it, and then it fits like a glove. And 
then — well, and then I have to trek away from 
the Berg, and I get down to the fine edges again, 
and, God forgive me, I am glad. That's the 
rub: / am glad. You see, there is no stuff of 
saintship there. 

The other day I debated with Mallont whether 
the "sporting parson" did more good than the 
other sort. Of course it was an absurd debate, 
for Mallont could take no real part in it, having 
never met the other sort of parson that I had 
in my mind. I suppose he has met rather 
reserved, gentlemanly, conventional English 
curates, but I do not mean them. From his 
point of view, then, the sporting parson won 
every time. He gave me a dozen stories of such, 
men whose cheeriness and good comradeship, 
coupled with genuine religion, had made men 
feel in club or bar that the Church had grit and 
manliness, that it was not an affair of stage 
curates and Mothers' Meetings, to be precise. 
He maintained that all that was to the good, 
and so it is up to a point. But is that the 
Church ? Do you suppose that the Apostle Paul, 
or Simon Stylites, or Francis Xavier, or the 
Cure d'Ors made men feel that the Church was 
cheerful, companionable, manly? It seems to 
me that they made them feel very differently 



OF WANTING GOD 43 

towards it — either that it was a great Enemy 
that the World should crucify or the Gate to 
that Lord for Whom one would gladly be cruci- 
fied. 

And, of course, although I am not going to 
labour the point, the Catholicism of modern 
Eome, or any form of the Christian religion that 
is approximately like it, comes nearest to-day 
to doing that. It is curious, too, that I put down 
the four saints above exactly as they struck me 
at the moment, types of that extravagant aban- 
donment of everything for God that is saintship. 
And the last two of that spiritual brotherhood 
are Eoman Catholic, and the first two are 

Of course, if you finish that sentence, you tend 
to settle a big question, but even so it leaves me 
with my main argument, that men to-day do 
not want God because so few of us, even 
Catholics, are those living epistles of Him that 
St. Paul talks about. 



6. OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 

THE river flows very swiftly round great 
boulders at the foot of a mountain, and 
you cross the swirling water, pick your 
way round a shoulder, climb over a little crest, 
and find yourself on a plateau in a cleft that 
is cut out between two foot-hills of the moun- 
tain itself. Is that at all clear? I suppose it 
is not, but let me put it this way. If you stand 
at the little church door, you look out on a 
sloping but comparatively flat plateau with 
exactly six houses scattered about, anything 
from one to three hundred yards from you. 
From your feet the slope runs down to a tiny 
stream, very gay with gladioli and other wild 
flowers in summer, that rushes swiftly down and 
down to the wild river below. Left and right 
of the plateau the hills rise sharply up and close 
you in, but they themselves are only spurs 
thrust out from the mountain mass. Behind, a 
valley rises ever more steeply out of sight. In 
front, across the river, is a great chain of moun- 
tains that runs north and south and hems you 
in, but gives you a wide-stretching view first. 
Six houses and the little church — that is all. 
Even with a glass you can hardly see more 

44 



OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 45 

villages, but at sundown there are thin wisps 
of blue smoke rising in pillars against the rocks 
and grass from the hidden clusters of huts all 
the way along the range before you. 

Yesterday was Sunday, and such a day! I 
finished by baptising twenty-six babies at a 
service that would have taken a bishop 's breath 
away. Eeally I had done my best to get it 
properly arranged, and the bewildered catechist 
did present me with some pages torn from an 
old exercise book on which were written up and 
down, more or less unintelligibly, the names of 
parents, villages, babies, and sponsors; but he 
had allowed every one to crowd into the church, 
and I could not sort out the babies from the 
other children, or arrange the godparents 
handily, or anything else. I did try. I 
clamoured for the first father whose name ap- 
peared on the paper, and several took up the 
cry till we were told that he was dead. I queried 
the second baby's name, which was put down 
as "Idlet," and got them to let me choose a 
Christian name, and I refused point-blank to 
baptise a boy Abednego. But after that I gave 
it up, and began. I was hot and tired and a bit 
angry, until in the middle of the actual chris- 
tening I had a sudden vision of the beauty of it 
all. There was the mud and stone church, with 
its mud altar in the apse, with crucifix and two 
candles and nothing else at all, for we have no 
frontal or hangings or pictures here, owing to 



46 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the difficulty of getting them up. On it was a 
tin wash-hand basin full of water, and behind 
some sacks of Kaffir corn and a huge pile of 
yellow mealies, harvest-festival offerings. The 
harvest was months ago, and the grain was not 
there to decorate the chancel, but just because 
it was not yet sold, and there was nowhere else 
to put it. All about me, crowding up the apse, 
were mothers and howling babies, some being 
suckled, some naked, some clothed; and all 
about the mothers, and absolutely packing the 
church, were the people of the congregation. 
I stood there baptising; Cyril held my book; 
another the bason when the child was a bit too 
big to lift; and the catechist called them up, 
fluttering his absurd sheets of paper. There 
was not one single scrap of propriety or ec- 
clesiasticism or decorum about it. Babies were 
thrust at me; and I seized them, baptised them, 
and handed them back. We disputed about 
names and ages during the service, just as the 
need occurred. Ever the packed mass hemmed 
us in. And yet, as I say, I had that vision in 
the middle of it all, and I felt like a primitive 
apostle in the catacombs and a father among his 
simple, homely people. 

The Prayer Book? No, I fear you would not 
have recognised it. Do you think I could pos- 
sibly have begun, "Dearly Beloved, forasmuch 
. . ." and so on? No, I just began like this: 
"Now then, my people, be quiet, all of you. 



OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 47 

What have we come here for to-day? eh? What? 
Come on now, somebody tell me." (A voice 
from a big fellow holding a baby) "To wash 
our children from their sins, oh, Father." 

"Quite right, and mind you pray for them 
all the time, and now I will get on with it." 

The babies made too much noise for any one 
to hear many of the prayers, but, to my surprise, 
they all took up the sponsors' answers and 
thundered them like a ragged roll among the 
hills, and they all recognised the ritual. Each 
little group murmured fervent "Aniens" as 
their babies were "washed." And when the 
last was done, I said — or almost shouted — ' ' Now 
then, kneel down, all of you. One ' Our Father ' 
and one 'Hail Mary' for the babies, and the 
'Divine Praises' in thanksgiving, and I will 
give you the Blessing." 

The offering at Baptism is conventionally a 
shilling. One man hesitated before he paid 
me for his two kiddies and demanded: "What 
do the people give down in the lowlands where 
the father lives?" 

"One shilling each child," said I. 

"Yes, but the father has come four days' 
journey to reach us. Will he please take this?" 
he answered, and put two half-crowns into my 
hand. 

I am utterly ashamed that I let the natives 
get on my nerves so often and irritate me, or 
that I lie in my blankets at six in the morning 



48 PILGRIM PAPERS 

and dread getting up, for really, at bottom, this 
is just an example of their simplicity and guile- 
lessness. Cyril was selling crosses and medals 
outside the church at midday, and when he 
came to me, and I counted up what remained, I 
found he had given me three shillings too much. 
"What's this, Cyril V I asked. "From whom 
hast thou been stealing three shillings?" 

He smiled, and proceeded to lay out the coins. 
"This shilling, Father," he said, "is from a 
man to whom the father sold a cross at Christ- 
mas last year, and he had no money then; two 
tihhis from two women who took medals and 
had no money last time the father was here 
(five months before); and eighteen-pence for a 
rosary which a woman took who is now dead, 
and she left the money with her husband." 
Now I had completely forgotten to whom I had 
given credit, or, indeed, that I had done so 
at all. There is such a rush during the few 
days I can be here that I do forget these things. 
And can you beat this for simplicity and 
honesty? 

Or take another incident. As I got to the 
church door in the early morning I found two 
women sitting at it with black handkerchiefs 
embroidered with a large white cross on their 
heads. One had come two and a half hours to 
be there. I remembered them, penitents, to 
whom I had assigned this penance. I asked for 
the book and saw their record. Sunday by 



OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 49 

Sunday all through the winter, in snow and 
frost and wind, they had been there at the 
church door in accordance with my direction. 
Mind, that penance was a real shame to them. 
Is not this penitence 1 

Or again, after the Baptism, I sat outside in 
an old Burberry and heard cases. The child- 
like simplicity of them passes words. A father 
brought his daughter, who had run off to a 
circumcision school and came weeping. This 
man had "stolen" a girl — which means run off 
with her before the cattle were paid — and came 
to tell me so and get his punishment. This 
couple had a daughter-in-law married to their 
son, and after one month ("It was only one 
month, Father") he died of the sickness; 
couldn 't they marry her to his brother ? There 
was a baby coming, and if they sent her back, 
they lost the cattle they had paid, and they had 
no more to buy a wife for the next son, the 
brother. Also she could only marry the brother 
by native law, as I well knew. But I could only 
give one possible judgment. They shook their 
whitening heads: the law of God was a hard, 
hard law. 

I was glad then that I had spoken as I did 
at mass. Such a mass! There were sixty- three 
confessions to hear first and sixty-three com- 
munions to give, and the little church was 
packed in one big jam with many more outside. 
Where they all come from, I never can imagine. 



50 PILGRIM PAPERS 

The service would have sent a ritualist off his 
head. Cyril led them in prayers, while I said 
the Preparation and Introit with the catechist. 
Then I thought they had better have the Ten 
Commandments to-day (you see, I had heard 
sixty- three confessions), and so I said, turning 
to them, "I'm going to read the Commandments 
to-day. Mind you join in the responses. ' ' Then 
I read, not your Prayer Book Commandments, 
but the Commandments truly in the vulgar 
tongue, such as ' ' Thou shalt work six days, but 
keep Sunday and Holy Days holy to God," and 
so on. 

Collect, Epistle, and Gospel — well, it was a 
Sunday after Trinity, and, to be honest, I did 
not think the poor souls would understand much 
of St. Paul to the Eomans or find the Collect 
very helpful. Besides, they only have mass 
about three times a year. So I said a votive 
mass of the Blessed Sacrament, which is simple, 
especially as I explained Epistle and Gospel 
after or before reading them. And then the 
Creed, for we want our heathen to hear the 
Creed, and then I preached. 

I said they had come to renew the Covenant 
which God had made with them in Baptism. In 
Baptism they had been made His, put under His 
law, welcome to His love. Basutoland was no 
longer their country, for their land was Heaven; 
we were neither Basuto nor English, but 
Catholics. They had given up heathenism and 



OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 51 

its customs and laws and taken God's, and in 
return He had made them His Children and 
People. Their lips had consented to that agree- 
ment. And now, Jesus was coming to them, 
and He would say, "Do you still mean all you 
said? Then see, I seal your lips with My Blood, 
and I give you My Body as a sign that I trust 
you and accept you. ' ' 

Then I told them to watch while I made the 
oblations, and while they sang a well-known 
hymn to our Lady I offered the bread and the' 
wine and water to God. Then Cyril led them 
in prayers, till I cried the age-long "Lift up 
your hearts'' as Paul cried in Rome, or Augus- 
tine to his first English converts. They all sang 
the "Holy, Holy, Holy," and the "Blessed is 
He that cometh in the Name of the Lord," and 
by this time I was naming the majesty of 
apostles and martyrs in the Canon, all but 
silently, of course. But I heard Cyril 's whisper : 
"Bow your heads! He is coming!" and then, 
as the bells rang thrice and thrice again, "Jesus 
is here — His Body and His Blood lies on the 
Altar!" And then, while I prayed on and on, 
remembering Abraham, Melchisedec, and Abel, 
praying for the Christian dead, begging that 
we might be included among the triumphant 
virgin saints, and finally breaking the unbroken 
Body and mingling the cup of sacrifice, Cyril 
led them again in the simple prayers I have 
taught them: 



52 PILGRIM PAPERS 

"0 good Jesu, I believe that Thou art here! 
good Jesu, I worship Thee in the Sacra- 
ment ; 
good Jesu, have mercy on me ; 
good Jesu, forgive me my sins ; 
good Jesu, receive my soul in the hour 
of my death"; 
and so on. 

At the Communion I had that vision again. 
They crowded up, kneeling all around me, poor, 
ignorant, rough souls, but understanding only 
that in some mysterious way I gave them Jesus, 
the hope of life and death, and bowing them- 
selves to the mud floor as they received. And 
the packed church sang uncouthly, but so truly, 
the "Agnus Dei," "0 Salutaris Hostia," and 
"Tantum ergo 8 acr amentum" 

Well, that is only typical of Sundays here. 
They raise me to heaven, and they cast me down 
to earth. It was wonderful; yes, it was. Despite 
all the weakness, sin, falling away, and so on, 
which I know much better than the white man 
who tells you Missions are a failure, it was 
wonderful. But — forgive me — it was not An- 
glican nor the Book of Common Prayer, nor yet 
was it the Catholicism of Eome. Both those 
things worry me. It is all very well, but I am 
a minister of the reformed Church of England, 
and I have sworn to the Thirty-nine Articles 
and the Book of Common Prayer. Well, I do 
more than go behind them and override them. 



OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 53 

You say that up here, in these mountains, with 
a kindly, sympathetic bishop, it does not mat- 
ter; but it does. I have a conscience, and it 
was I who took those vows. The Church of 
England may one day be different from what 
it is ; it may, for all I know, one day be Eoman 
Catholic; but it is not so now. Meantime I 
am an accredited ambassador sent out with a 
mission, and I disown my credentials and have 
set aside my papers. That, it seems to me, is 
what Almighty God sees. 

Secondly, there are the people. I feel daily 
ithat I betray them. They go from me to other 
'Anglican churches, to the denial of what I have 
taught them, to confusion and heresy, and worse. 
Only the other day, down below the Berg, I 
was asked to address a school about our Lady 
and the Saints, because at the church the 
children must needs attend they had been told 
publicly that our Lady was not in heaven and 
could not pray for them. Only the other day 
a boy of mine came back to me, and, after a 
mass, came up questioning: 

"Is the bread made into the Body of Jesus, 
Father?" 

"Yes," I said. "Haven't I always taught 
you so?" 

"The father has," he said; "but Mr. at 

said we mustn't kneel on our knee before 

we go up to receive, for that would be wor- 
shipping bread." 



54 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Of course there are far better men than I who 
satisfy themselves that to go on as I go on is 
right; and I do not judge them. I think I am 
learning gradually not to judge any one, how- 
ever apparently wrong I may think them. 
Things are too complex, my dear. So with these 
Anglican priests: to them their Orders and 
Sacraments are beyond doubt, and for difficul- 
ties about the Church they are content to wait. 
Jesus comes to the altar at their word and under 
their hand, they believe, and that is enough. 
Well, to their own Master they must give ac- 
count. I, personally, have never felt this a 
conclusive argument, and it seems to me that 
I have been sent to a place in which a man 
might feel the argument as strongly as possible, 
perhaps in order more definitely to repudiate it. 
If any man ever felt that his people had been 
fed with the Bread of Life at his hands and 
depended upon him, I do, and such dependent 
children they are, too. But they are not mine, 
they are God's, and however much I might wish 
to, I cannot take upon myself the responsibility 
of shepherding them without authority. I may 
even be standing between them and God, for 
if I were not here, that would be one conflicting 
voice at least the less. 

But that is not the point. I told you these 
Jetters would be by way of an apologia, nothing 
loig or wise — for I cannot pretend to that — but 
still the apologia of a soul. And this is what 



OF A SUNDAY IN THE MISSION 55 

I would say very solemnly to you, that I fear 
one day, if I make no move, that I may have 
to stand before the throne of the Truth having 
sworn to a profession of Faith which I had 
ceased to believe but did not honestly repudiate. 



7. OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS 

ONCE upon a time a sub-inspector of 
Government Police, a trader, and a mis- 
sionary foregathered not so many miles 
from where I am at present, and, in the course 
of conversation, discussed the character of the 
native. The policeman remarked sardonically 
that a few years hearing cases in the police 
court gave one the true picture and would do 
much to correct some people's ideas. The 
trader said that, on the contrary, he was the 
best judge, for whereas the policeman saw the 
dull rogues (who got caught), he saw the clever 
(who did not), but that he supposed the mis- 
sionary, if he kept his eyes open, would see 
the most clever, because he would see those who 
set out to cheat God. And at that the missionary 
upped and defended his people, as he was bound 
to do, and the usual talk of mission-spoiled na- 
tives and "rice Christians" followed. 

But it is not easy to decide who sees most 
of the true native character. Of course the 
priest abroad may easily be blinded, just as he 
is often blinded at home. Natives, like other 
people, naturally put on their best graces with 
their best clothes when he is about. But, for 

56 



OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS 57 

all that, i^ is equally true that the trader has 
not quite the vantage point for judgment that 
he thinks he has. He sees the man of many 
flocks who comes to sell his wool, but it is still 
true of our Christians, as it was of St. Paul's 
at Corinth, that there are not many rich. And 
if they are rich, they are usually feeble Chris- 
tians, as the missionary knows well enough. 
Personally, I cannot recall one really rich, faith- 
ful Christian on the Berg, by "rich" meaning 
the kind of native who will get £100 to £150 
for his wool at the store in one selling. Then, 
again, of these, as of lesser customers, the trader 
sees the worst side. He sees the native when 
he is dealing with that alien thing, money, and 
when, moreover, he is out to fight the white 
man who makes, he supposes in his ignorance, 
inordinate profits. Nor is it always ignorance. 
White men do make a good thing of trading, 
and the native has had ground to be suspicious 
and uncivil at the scales before now. And in 
in any case money brings out the worst in black 
and white. 

On that occasion, however, all three judges 
agreed in one particular at least, that the longer 
you lived among the natives, the more you felt 
that you did not understand them. The mis- 
sionary, who had spent sixteen years among 
them, was as sure of this as the others. He 
said that some few years after he came out, 
when he had mastered the language and 



58 PILGRIM PAPERS 

travelled a good deal among the villages, he 
felt he really knew the minds of the people, but 
that ever since he had been unlearning that first 
impression. He said he had known the most 
faithful lapse suddenly without apparent cause 
or any fresh additional temptation. He had 
heard the most intelligent develop a line of 
argument and stick to it as perfectly reasonable 
when it was the most arrant rubbish to a 
European. 

On the sixteen years premise I have not been 
nearly long enough among the people to judge, 
but for all that I propose to record for you my 
impressions. It is now a week since I took up 
my pen to write to you, and all the time I have 
been living and moving amongst tiny native 
villages and the great mountains, without a 
white man — and he as far as I from the rest 
of his people — being ever nearer than one day's 
journey. Each day's trek has been really enjoy- 
able, not too long and not too short, but they 
have been so much alike that I am a little tired 
of them. Up a thousand feet, in and out and 
in and out again along and around the crests 
at that level, then down a thousand feet and 
then up again, and so on, two or three times a 
day — so the survey map says I have travelled. 
In the early evening one reaches the village for 
which one has been aiming, and this week I 
have slept each night in a native hut, and each 
night in a different one. To-night, as I write, 



OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS 59 

I am all but up on the border. No priest has 
ever been here before, and I should think, quite 
probably, no European officials. It is not quite 
near enough to the border for the border patrol 
to have passed, and the main Government trail 
up, between the two nearest " camps" as we 
call them, crosses the river, above which is this 
village, some four or five miles down stream and 
quite out of sight. This week, too, is, of course, 
only one of many, so, although I have not had 
sixteen years' experience, I have something of 
which to write. 

I should say, first, that I think the native is 
the most exasperating person it is possible to 
meet. But he is exasperating for the same rea- 
son that he often appears rude, because mainly 
he has no idea that what you would call rude 
or exasperating is so. The way he meets you 
on trek and stops and shouts at you; the way 
he barges into the hut where you are writing 
or reading, hat on head and talking loudly six- 
teen to the dozen; his slowness at grasping a 
new thing and his unreasoning suspicions of it; 
his habit of talking at you and over you; his 
slow stare and laugh at you; his acquiescence 
in what you say and his immediate doing of 
exactly the opposite — all this is annoying. A 
good deal of it the average white man never 
experiences, for, as you might guess, he would 
consider it below his dignity to offer the occa- 
sion for it ; but if it comes your way, you begin, 



60 PILGRIM PAPERS 

after a while, to see that it is not meant. It 
comes my way because it seems to me that, if 
a priest comes as a priest to a village, he comes 
very simply and humbly as the guest and as the 
servant of a humble Lord, and it is not for him 
to demand this or that, or to isolate himself. 
Some would call that being a traitor to one's 
colour, I suppose; but I cannot help it, for to 
act otherwise would be to be a traitor to one's 
God. 

I have come at last to feel about natives a 
little of what I feel about horses and dogs ! That 
hardly sounds agreeable with my last para- 
graph, does it? but it really is. I mean that I 
love animals immensely, and I always want to 
treat them as if they were human beings. With 
my horses especially I feel this. I am always 
catching myself saying: " Cheer up, old man! 
only another two miles!" or "Steady on, young 
'un! I can see further than you can up here, 
and I know that's a bad road." But it is no 
use talking like that, just as it is no use feeling 
about a horse as you would about a man. I 
do not mean, of course, that it is no use to feel 
at all, and that one has any right to be unkind, 
but I mean you have got to realise that what is 
pleasant to you is not necessarily pleasant to 
a horse, and that what is pain to you is not 
necessarily pain to him, and so on. He belongs 
to a different race. His mental outlook is in 
another category to ours. So my present pony, 



OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS 61 

Yacob, little ass that he is, simply will not let 
me get off and lead him up or down hill. If I 
do, he plants his legs on the ground and will 
not move. It is no use my explaining that it 
will be easier for him if I walk, or that I prefer 
to walk or that I do not want to tire him: noth- 
ing will induce him to move. There is nothing 
for it but to sit on him, and after some long, 
panting, breathless ascent, if I get off at the 
summit, he will rub his nose against my arm, as 
much as to say, "Now, that was well done, 
wasn't it, master?" If, on the other hand, I 
simply cannot ride him down a stiff descent, the 
only thing to do is to fasten the reins up and 
throw stones at him to make him go on ahead. 
And at the bottom blest if he will speak to me ! 
One ought to remember, I suppose, that, if a 
man gets tired first in his legs, a mountain pony 
gets tired there last. At the end of a long day 
if I say to Cyril: "Don't hobble the horses to- 
night, Cirili: they must be dog-tired; let them 
be easy," why, nine times out of ten they will 
be half a dozen miles off in the morning. 

But this is not to say that the horse is not 
an intelligent and amiable gentleman. He cer- 
tainly is, but his intelligence and amiability are 
not those of a man. And it is so, I think, with 
the native. He is not a European, and the cen- 
turies behind him have taught him other les- 
sons, so that your first step towards understand- 
ing him has got to be that you must never judge 



62 PILGRIM PAPERS 

him by your standards, nor suppose that his 
mental processes will he entirely in line with 
your own. 

Once, a year or so ago, I rode painfully up 
the last hundred of a thousand feet to a village, 
the wind cold and biting and the rain coming 
up. There were a couple of men and some 
women about, and the women stared a little 
and then went indoors, while the men sat on 
without moving. We got off, and Cyril went up 
to the men. They grunted at each other and 
fired out questions, and got up and looked at 
me and spat and sat down again. I fear I lost 
my temper. It was six hours since I had eaten, 
and I was cold and very tired, so I off-saddled 
my own horse, got out a ground-sheet, lit my 
pipe, and removed myself a score of paces. 
There I sat on a rock in the rain and thought 
evil things of natives. After a bit a man got 
up and came over to me. He stood a few yards 
off and stared. Then he said, " Hum-hum !" 
nasally several times, and finally held out his 
hand for a shake. I restrained myself enough 
to take it. Then he said, Would I not come 
to a house! I said (in English, fortunately, 
for I was too angry to remember any Sesuto), 
"Good heavens, man! Do you think I like sit- 
ting on a ground-sheet in the rain?" And he 
did not understand, and smiled sweetly, and 
said, ' ' Hum-hum ! ' ' again, and led the way. And 
then I found that the women had already been 



OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS 63 

removing their goods into the rain to clear me 
a hut, and that the head man had seen us coming 
and had gone off at once to find a sheep to slay 
for me. You see, a native would not have been 
particularly cold or tired or hungry, nor would 
he have minded the rain, nor is it his code of 
etiquette at once to usher a stranger within 
doors and offer him a drink. But I had not 
thought of all that. 

Another time we had been travelling for 
hours and hours without a sight of a hut. I 
had malaria and a temperature of 103 degrees, 
and it was raining steadily. We arrived at 
sunset, at long last, at a village, and I told 
Cyril we must off-saddle there. There was one 
man only visible, and he refused. He said we 
were too near "lands" of wheat, and the horses 
would get in. We must go on to the next vil- 
lage, just over that rise. We went, and the 
village turned out to be up half a mountain, 
round a precipice, and some two miles off. But, 
you see, wheat lands bulked bigger to that native 
than they did to me, and he did not know what 
malaria was. Nor is two miles round a precipice 
and up five hundred feet anything more than 
"just over there" to a native in the mountains. 

Perhaps I am learning a little. Nowadays I 
ride up, get off, sit down, talk a bit, and smoke. 
Presently I am asked to a hut. I long to unpack 
and make arrangements for the night, but I do 
not. Some time or another Cyril brings in my 



64 PILGRIM PAPERS 

kit, or I am conducted elsewhere and find it. 
Some time or another a fire gets lit, and 
Cyril comes up and says, "Porridge to-night, 
Father !" just as cheerfully as if he had said, 
"Boast duck!" or "Lamb and mint sauce!" 
And I say, "I think I'll have some tea, Cirili," 
just as if I had a case of champagne in the pack. 
With the porridge he will bring some cold pota- 
toes and some wiafi — thick, sour milk— very 
good, or a chicken, with luck, and some native 
bread. And then I eat, with no regard for the 
European order of dishes, and possibly I have 
some jam or a tin of sardines from my own 
few stores. Afterwards the folk crowd in for 
night prayers, with howling babies to be com- 
forted at the breast and little herds in skins. 
They sit on my bed, but it does not matter. 
And then I get into pyjamas and read Brown- 
ing, perhaps; and you will excuse me if I think 
we are getting to know each other that way. 

Last night I rolled up at a village where I 
am well known. A little kiddie in a string of 
beads (Hesther, aged eight) rushed at me and 
climbed on my knee and felt in my pockets for 
sweets. They gave me a marvellously decorated 
hut, with a dado running round about three feet 
from the floor and figures in coloured earths 
above of the most incredible horses, hippopot- 
ami, ostriches, and sheep, with a human hand 
with outspread fingers at intervals. Calendars, 
four of them, also adorned the walls, for 1901, 



OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS 65 

1905, 1911, and 1912 respectively. My hostess 
came in, and dressed and chatted while I waited 
for supper. I fed on porridge, eggs, bread, jam, 
and tea, and a dish of cold boiled beans that 
came in at the end. Hesther knelt by me during 
prayers, in a sheep-skin now, very quiet and 
devout, and my host only spat once or twice on 
the floor on which I was to sleep. Also he 
offered me the blanket he was wearing in case 
I had not enough. 

My dear, I wonder if God finds us as rude and 
as difficult. I wonder if heaven and its ways 
will seem as remote from our ideas as their ways 
seem to me remote from mine. But one thing I 
do not question, and it moves me much to-night. 
Our Heavenly Father will be so much more 
tender and more patient with me than I am 
with them. Good-night. 



8. OF THE MISSION PACK-SADDLE 

I DID not write to yon last night, and if yon 
eonld have inspected my quarters, yon 
wonld not have expected me to do so. If 

yon had seen me lying in Bnt wait a 

minnte ; it will spoil the tale to begin like that. 

We set ont — Cyril and I and fonr horses — 
from a certain village, very mnch ont of the way 
in the mountains, to trek down to comparative 
civilisation, a store, and another village. We 
were not able to start very early becanse of 
mass, bnt we got a good pace on when once on 
the road, for we knew we had eight honrs ' trek 
ahead of ns, all nnknown road, and some of it 
across nplands withont the semblance of a foot- 
path. And we got on qnite well for about three 
honrs, and then the series of catastrophes began. 
I shonld tell yon that we were trekking along 
the very edge of the Berg above Natal, and, 
always beantifnl, it was yesterday a supremely 
wonderful sight. Natal lies 8,000 feet below, 
and the great krantzes on the top of which we 
ride fall all bnt sheer in some places. Here and 
there they rise to rocky castles of nnclimbable 
stone, which we have to skirt, and here and 
there again great fissures are split in them 

66 



OF THE MISSION PACK-SADDLE 67 

which run down dizzily to the far plains be- 
neath. Sometimes Natal lies bathed in sunlight 
and spread out like a map ; sometimes — and yes- 
terday was one of the times — the clouds hide 
it, and we are above the clouds. The solid 
ground was beneath our feet, and on the right 
buttress and crest and peak of the face of the 
Berg, but on the left, so far as one could see, 
a tossed sea of billowy white cloud. So the 
world must look to an airman. And then sud- 
denly all that fleecy ocean got in motion. It 
was rolled up towards us, and came on in great 
waves of white soft mist eddying round the 
castles, and washing up the fissures, to spread 
over every depression on our side of the border. 
Beautiful as it was, it was a sinister thing. Once 
that cloud envelops you, unless the road is well 
known (and even then it is dangerous), you 
must camp where you stand. 

So Cyril and I rode hard. It was wonderful 
how we escaped it. At times we cut across the 
top of a funnel up which the white vapour rolled 
from cloud-land with so little time to spare that 
100 yards behind, when we had got across, you 
could see nothing at all but a white wall. King 
John and the Wash were not in it ! But honestly 
it was eerie, that continual rush to avoid being 
cut off. 

And then suddenly came a crash of thunder. 
We had hardly noticed, but the storm that had 
forced the mists before it was upon us now. 



68 PILGRIM PAPERS 

As unbelievably quickly as any one who knows 
these parts could tell you the heavens began to 
break up, as it seemed, above us, and down came 
the hail. Yes, hail although it is mid-summer, 
stinging, biting, freezing hail, and there was 
little that we could do. But in a moment we 
had to do something, for a pack-horse, stung up 
or scared, or both, bolted a few yards and jerked 
up his pack-saddle, which promptly broke for 
the nth time. 

There now, you have it, my grievance, my 
bugbear, the burden of my lament — the Mission 
Pack-Saddle. How it came into the Mission I 
cannot say. In moments of care-free benignity, 
comfortably ensconced at home, I can conceive 
that some one was once grateful for it. But 
that must have been a long time ago, for its 
pattern is, as I should say, much after the style 
of those used by Abraham in trekking from the 
land of Charran. It is compacted of wood and 
naked wrought iron, besides leather, with little 
hand-screws to work it up and down; and the 
straps connected with it are legion. My horses, 
even in their stable, wear a tired and scared 
expression, and people say it is because of the 
amount of work asked of them; but that is not 
true ; it is because they know the Mission Pack- 
Saddle is in the saddle-room next door, and they 
may be called upon at any time to carry it. 

I swore never to use it again the first time I 
trekked — the time the bags burst to bits and the 



OF THE MISSION PACK-SADDLE 69 

jam-bottle smashed among my blankets! — but 
I had to, and I got new leather bags — at least, 
they were not new, but they were leather — and 
packed my blankets outside. Another time the 
cast-iron shoulder broke, and we took three days 
to trek one day's journey. And how many 
times straps have broken, how many times it 
has given horses sore backs, how many times it 
has endangered my immortal soul, I cannot tell 
you. I hardly dare think. This time, however, 
it only lost a screw and a nut, and Spider 
quieted after he had bucked off the bags > 
smashed the frying-pan, and put his foot 
through the kettle. 

We could do nothing while the hail fell, but 
after a while it merely drizzled, and then we set 
to. The thunder had dispersed the mist, but the 
drizzle crept down our backs, and the hail lay 
thick and white on the ground, and it was so 
cold that our hands grew utterly numb. I 
hardly know how we patched the thing up and 
got going again, but we did — with two hours 
lost. 

We could scarcely get along, either. Twice 
the pack worked loose as a result of the accident, 
and we slithered and slipped and wrestled with 
stiff reins on and on and on. At 6.30 p.m. in an 
unknown land, and obviously still far from 
villages or the store, I said to Cyril that we must 
camp down, and camp down we did, while the 
night crept on apace and the rain fell steadily. 



70 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Oh, I daresay numbers of ten times more 
heroic people have done it under worse circum- 
stances before me, but that does not make it any 
better ! You imagine it ! You dismount in the 
rain, and take the saddles off. Still in the rain, 
you select a reasonably smooth piece of sodden 
ground, and you unroll the wet tent and get it 
up. You put a wet ground-sheet on the wet 
ground under the wet tent — the small patrol 
size about four feet high — and you spread your 
roll of more or less wet blankets on the ground- 
sheet. (Remember, we missionaries are not 
police officers; we travel with one boy and one 
— Mission — pack-saddle; we cannot keep our 
blankets dry in bags.) Then you get your wet 
self inside, and you settle down to a cold, damp 
supper. A few knobs of cold mutton, some 
native bread, and water of a thick brown colour, 
because the rain had swollen and discoloured 
every stream, had to content us, and after that 
I did not feel I could write to you. Instead I 
crept into the blankets in my riding-breeches 
and shirt, had one final and comprehensive curse 
at the pack-saddle, and slept. 

What do you say? My dear, do you think I 
have not tried? The Government has no end of 
them, but it will not sell, because when the 
Prince of Wales or the Governor-General or a 
M.L.A. visits the country they have to use 
several score at once. They have most kindly 
lent me one now and again, for short treks, when 



OF THE MISSION PACK-SADDLE 71 

I really could not stand the thought of the 
Mission Pack-Saddle or while it was in hospital; 
but that was for short treks, and I could not 
ask for one for so long a trek as this. There 
is a decent saddle, indeed, on sale at a store I 
know of — a small one, but the right breed. I 
have often looked at it and longed. But do you 
know the price? £30! Honestly, £30! A 
month's salary of a Durban tram-conductor, six 
weeks of mine! Thirty pounds would pay a 
catechist for a year, would build the walls of 
a mission church, would enable me to fit up 
several schools with the new black-boards and 
the few desks that they so badly want, and 
would warrant — if I really had so much ab- 
solutely and actually over the year's working 
and in hand — my venturing, with some hope of 
success, on the opening of one of the half-dozen 
new out-stations for which the work is crying 
out. Why don't I get a new one, indeed! You 
do not know what you say. But for all that, 
if the thing were to let me down once too often, 
let us say in the winter while snow was falling, 
and if I could not mend it, as might easily hap- 
pen, and so I could not get on, and if the snow 
were to lie on the tops there for a couple of 
weeks, as it often does, why, then, my loving 
friends and relations would doubtless put up a 
brazen memorial tablet somewhere to my 
memory, whereon would be inscribed heroic 
words saying that I had perished in bitter 



72 PILGRIM PAPERS 

weather while doing my duty on the face of the 
Berg. But you, my dear, would know better. 
You would know that the true inscription 
ought to run: 

TO THE MEMORY OF 

FRANCIS THOMAS WILFRID, 

WHO PERISHED 
IN BITTER WEATHER . . . ETC., 

Killed by the Mission Tack-Saddle. 

But, you know, joking apart — only it is really 
not joking at all — this sort of thing does make 
one wonder a little. I do not expect the Govern- 
ment to give me a pack-saddle, for I do not 
regard this or any modern Government as iden- 
tified in any sense with Christianity. The 
officials as men are very friendly; the Govern- 
ment as a whole is very courteous; but they 
as a class and it as an institution have no 
definite faith, and are not out here for philan- 
thropic purposes. Nor do I expect most of my 
fellow-countrymen, here or at home, to give me 
a pack-saddle, for they mostly do not believe in 
missions to the heathen, and often whole- 
heartedly think that the bodies of the suffering 
poor outside the empty London churches are 
more important than the souls of black folk who 
crowd out what churches there are in this land, 
but mostly have no churches outside of which 
to sit. Nor do I expect my Bishop to give me 
one, for he spends his time in trying to ad- 



OF THE MISSION PACK-SADDLE 73 

minister a diocese financially on a starvation 
pittance. But I do wonder if Christian Church- 
people at home have a right sense of proportion. 
My pack-saddle is only typical of ten thousand 
similar needs of hundreds of other priests of the 
Anglican Church who have gone to undertake 
the Church's supreme duty on the edge of 
civilisation and beyond, and whose work is 
hampered, whose lives are even endangered, for 
less than the cost of that new brass lectern or 
of that handsome set of hassocks. Of course 
one cannot blame the people who give the lec- 
tern or subscribe for the hassocks. I honestly 
do not. But I rolled over in my wet blankets 
trying to get to sleep last night and thought, 
for the millionth time, that my old pack-saddle 
is not the only relic with a screw loose and a 
nut missing! 



9. OF THE BEST IN LIFE 

AT my last resting-place I picked tip an 
old illustrated magazine, and I have 
been reading it to-day at the midday off- 
saddle. There is an article in it that interests 
me very much, and I have read it again and 
again, although, I confess, with little result. I 
don't quite see what is the conclusion of the 
writer's meditations. Perhaps, like so many 
modern meditations, it is not meant to have a 
conclusion. At any rate, he is discussing "The 
Best in Life," and I cannot really make out 
what he takes the best in life to be, or whether 
or not — and this is the important thing — he 
advises you to climb any obstacle and break 
every convention to get it. "Love and Work 
contain some of the best in Life," he says, 
"without a doubt"; but that does not help 
much. If the best of life is distributed around 
in that way, and reaches you as a kind of 10 per 
cent, solution in a number of bottles, it is a poor 
business. Most of us cannot afford to buy half 
the bottles. 

But you were talking to me once about this 
sort of thing, and I am intrigued with the prob- 

74 



OF THE BEST IN LIFE 75 

lem. What does the phrase mean, I wonder? 
Does it mean the best thing that living has to 
offer, or does it mean the thing that makes one's 
life, taken as a whole, the best life possible? If 
the first, then of course the best in life may be 
some crowning moment or thing long wanted 
and hardly attained, but gone after the moment, 
or gone after a while at any rate. One might 
debate that it meant anything from a first kiss 
to a first baby, or from the sense of achievement 
on the acquisition of one's first fiver up to the 
smiling possession of a considerable fortune. If 
the second, I should say it varied much with the 
disposition of the individual. Popularity; the 
trust of one's fellow-men; freedom to wander 
at will ; a pleasant ordinary wife in an ordinary 
pleasant home; excitement; cricket; big game 
shooting; study — all these are things which, 
acquired, would be acclaimed by some people as 
offering them the best in life. Honestly, it is not 
an easy phrase. 

You remember Mr. H. G. Wells' fine novel, 
"Love and Mr. Lewisham." It is concerned 
with the discovery of the best in life. Mr. 
Lewisham thought the best lay in getting on, in 
making a name, in adhering to a time-table; 
that ideal broken, he thought it lay in a girl's 
love; and after vicissitudes and disappoint- 
ments he heard his first baby crying in its cot, 
and shrugged his shoulders at the discovery. 
The best of life lay there. I think it does for 



76 PILGRIM PAPERS 

thousands of people. To create the little life, 
to guard and mould and cherish it — that is their 
best in life. As a philosopher one may marvel. 
Nature is an amazing sorceress. She sends men 
and women out to a colossal struggle in which 
they hardly survive, and she breathes over them 
a spell so that their worn faces only smile at 
last, thinking they have achieved, when they 
have brought yet another life into the age-long 
conflict within the vicious circle. 

Or I have never forgotten what I still think to 
be the cleverest and most striking short story I 
have ever read. I do not know who wrote it nor 
where I read it, but there was only just one idea 
in it, as there ought to be in a short story. It 
can be quite briefly told. There was a clerk, 
getting on for sixty, who, boy and man, had 
worked for one firm whole-heartedly, ungrudg- 
ingly, unceasingly. He had never married; he 
had never taken what you would call a holiday ; 
he appeared to have no interests outside the 
office; and within it, although trusted abso- 
lutely, he was just the queer, unimaginative, 
groovy old Tom whom nobody could imagine 
anywhere else but on his stool. His salary was 
enough for his bachelor needs. He was just a 
bit of the office furniture. 

But old Tom had his best in life, for which he 
had lived and schemed and hoped and prayed 
for fifty long years, a mad "best in rife," with- 
out rhyme or reason, of which he could not 



OF THE BEST IN LIFE 77 

speak, it was too dear, but for which he never 
ceased to hope. He wanted to visit San Fran- 
cisco ! He, whose daily 'bus ride was all but the 
limit so far of his life's journeyings, was at 
heart a born traveller; he, who seemed the most 
nn imaginative of men, had the mind of a poet. 
Born in a dnll environment, enslaved to a daily 
routine, he had saved and schemed and planned 
for six months ' riot one day among the colour 
and scent and beauty of lovely 'Frisco. He 
knew its streets, the view through the Golden 
Gate, the sound of the Pacific surf on its 
shores, the glory of the setting sun across a 
world of ocean, from the books ; and at sixty he 
saw the possibility of the realisation of his 
dream. He had at length saved the money; in 
long years of service he had more than earned 
six months of leave. It only remained to 
ask. . . . 

It needed all Ms pluck to knock at the 
master's door, for he never did so, except at 
regular times. The little old man, once inside, 
usually so composed and dry, could hardly 
speak for nervousness, and he only got out his 
modest request — six months' leave after fifty 
years' service — stammering, at long last. And 
his master could hardly believe his ears. What 
ever did he want six months ' leave for ? He had 
no relations! Stuff and nonsense, then! six 
months! He could have a fortnight to go to 
Margate, but six months ! Why, he had always 



78 PILGRIM PAPERS 

been bored with holidays, and glad to get back 
if he took the inside of a week. Was he sure he 
was quite well? 

Yes, quite sure, and he wanted six months ' 
leave . . . 

But why? Let him tell his master why. 
Come now, out with it ! What in the wide world 
did he, old Tom, want with six months' leave? 
Really it had its funny side . . . And his 
master laughed heartily. 

Poor old Tom! That laughter finished him. 
How could he say he wanted his best in life? 
How could he say that he, the old crabbed clerk 
of sixty, wanted to realise the dream of years 
and go off to — San Francisco! He could not 
say it, and he did not. He mumbled that very 
likely the master was right; he'd think better 
of it . . . 

" That's right," said his master kindly, tak- 
ing up his pen. "You can have that fortnight 
whenever you like, and it need not cost you 
anything, either; you've been a good servant to 
the firm. Thank you. Good-morning." 

An hour later he passed through his office on 
his way to lunch and saw old Tom in the same 
old coat at the same old desk. "Funny old 
chap!" he mused as the door shut behind him. 
"I wonder what the old donkey was thinking 
about!" 

I have never forgotten that story, and never 
shall. Maybe the best in life, to nine out of ten 



OF THE BEST IN LIFE 79 

of us, is never any more than a dream of which 
we dare not speak. 

But The Best in Life — what is it? An hour 
ago I had almost said it was this off-saddle so 
far as I am concerned! It does take a great 
deal of beating — the long morning's ride on a 
cup of coffee ; the arrival at a place like this, a 
place with a couple of willows drooping over a 
crystal stream, a bed of rich grass, a rugged old 
mountain behind, the wide, far-spreading valley 
before, and the dreaming, cloudless vault 
above ; then the rest as one flings oneself down, 
and the joy of a pipe, and every care in the 
whole world banished over yonder ridge, for at 
least you can do nothing, be found by nobody, 
and want no more just here and now. No more 1 
Well, I wonder. Will you understand if I tell 
you that I find myself remembering that "Frag- 
ment" of D. G. Rossetti's : 

"Who shall say what is said in me, 
With all that I might have been dead in me?" 

But I can tell you what I believe is the best 
in life to every man, woman, and child on the 
planet — at once the best thing life has to offer 
and the thing that makes life the best to each of 
us. And it is not really a pious, conventional 
answer, or not as I mean it. The Best in Life, 
dear heart, is God. 

So does Amiel open the Journal Intime! 

"There is but one thing needful — to possess God." 



80 PILGRIM PAPERS 

God is beyond words of mine to tell. He is 
joy, strength, beauty, grace, reward, striving, 
love, vision, and life. Everything consists in 
Him, and He is in everything, of everything, the 
soul of the world. Onr Lord said, traditionally, 
"Lift the stone, and there thou shalt find Me." 
True, infinitely true, and He is in the flower in 
the crannied wall, and He is in the light in your 
eyes and the gold strands that run through your 
hair, and He was in the shining of the well- 
scrubbed Army pots to Francis in Mr. Benson's 
story, and it is His Breast on which I lie now 
on this green grass, and whose Face smiles at 
me in this golden valley. People won't realise 
it; that's all. He is not the God they imagine, 
not the God of Semitic Commandments and of 
Jehu and of the late Kaiser ; passionately I tel] 
you that. The Old Testament tells you what 
the Jews thought God was like, just as the 
Kaiser's speeches told us what he thought God 
was like. But men have spent their days 
libelling God. They have thought Him far off 
and hidden, but He is not far and not hidden. 
He is revealing Himself all the time, smiling at 
us out of every beautiful thing, reaching out to 
us in every noble impulse, picturing Himself to 
us in every glorious ideal, yes, and touching us 
with those wise fatherly fingers of His in every 
pain. Oh, the good, good God . . . 

Well, and God is the best in life. He is the 
only best. If a man find Him, he has lived; if 



OF THE BEST IN LIFE 81 

not, he has not been born. Not that He is hard 
to find, and indeed He is found of them that 
seek Him not often enough, and of them who do 
not know that it is He when they have found 
Him. But it is He all the same, and I will tell 
you how I think He is found. 

We men, my dear — and I will not speak of 
women — are a sordid sort of beasts in a way. 
We very easily do sordid kinds of things, things 
which a woman, unless her eyes have been 
opened, finds hard to understand. And, in ad- 
dition to this, we often have sordid schemes for 
life, or allow ourselves to grow sordid in the 
execution of them. 

But, on the other hand, there are men with 
ideals, and still more men (if not every man) 
who glimpse ideals now and again even if they 
turn from them with a sigh. There are men 
with high ideals of honourable work, even if it 
be no more than honourable human service, 
from the great scientist who is honestly out to 
know that he may serve, down to the batmen 
many of us had in the War. Patriotism makes 
a high ideal for others. Home life makes a high 
ideal for another, and I have seen a pathetic 
figure of a city clerk, trudging home on £150 a 
year down suburban streets, transformed when 
he had safely reached his " villa' ' and sat down 
in his parlour and got his kiddies on his knees. 
Eeligion is often the very noblest ideal of very 
noble men, if the world only knew it, from the 



82 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Breton peasant, who gives up his life to be a 
foreign missionary, up to my Lord Cardinal 
who says humble, childish prayers when his 
day's work is done. And there are men who 
look into a girl's eyes and read the highest of 
ideals there, who kiss the hand rather than the 
lips after that look, and who would be saints of 
God if they never fell from what they had seen 
in that moment. One and all of these men have 
seen God, God revealing Himself in many ways, 
but God, the Soul of the World. 

And great artists paint, and know that there is 
something they cannot get into their pictures 
altogether; and great architects build, and 
when they have built, they sigh a little; and 
great scientists spend their years, and at the 
end there is a look in their eyes — you can see it 
always — as if their researches had led them all 
but into the Presence but not quite; and great 
lovers — why, they usually die of a broken heart 
because they have not been able to love as they 
thought they would when first they looked into 
love's eyes. And the lesser good, honest, true- 
hearted men — they, too, are tired towards the 
close, and usually are glad to go. Maybe they 
do not know why. But I think I know. They, 
too, have been reaching out after God, and have 
yet quite to find Him. 

But the search, beloved, is the best in life. 

It seems to me that the world is very blind 
not to see all this, and stretched out here in the 



OF THE BEST IN LIFE 83 

sun, I am reminded of a curious little incident 
of which I was once a spectator. In a big manu- 
facturing town, I wandered into a hall in which 
a lecture was being given on the evidence for 
God. A young minister had been piling up 
statements, all quite good and true as I thought, 
and was now summing up preparatory to sit- 
ting down. As soon as he did so a workman in 
the hall jumped to his feet, and dashed one fist 
into the other. "It's all a lie, mister," he said, 
"and I'll offer ye the best proof one man can 
give another. I deny God. But if there is a 
living God, let Him strike me dead this 
minute ! ' ' 

He flashed his hand out dramatically, and so 
stood. It was, maybe, cheap, but it was effect- 
ive. A dead silence fell, and a woman near me 
shuddered. I wondered what the platform 
would do. But we had not long to wait, for the 
young minister got up easily and burst into a 
hearty laugh. 

It sounded very curiously in that silent hall, 
and the workman flushed scarlet. He was about 
to burst into angry speech, but the minister 
stopped him and said much as follows : 

"I was trimming my rose-trees the other day, 
when a green-fly on a twig astounded me. It 
got up on its hind legs and said, in the most 
curious falsetto voice you ever heard, ' You 're 
not a man! I can't see you, and I don't believe 
the green-fly when they say that it is Man that 



84 PILGRIM PAPERS 

sometimes kills us in such quantities. Do you 
hear? — I hope you do— I don't believe in you! 
Now, if you're a man, strike me dead this 
minute ! ' 

"Well, I was fairly taken aback. I thought 
at first that I was dreaming, or that I had not 
heard aright. Then I ran into the house and 
got some sticks and some gauze, and covered 
that twig carefully up without disturbing any- 
thing, and went out to get some of my friends 
to come and hear that green-fly. But they only 
live a few hours, and when I got back he was 
dead. I suppose he died very wise. I reckon 
he told all the other green-fly that he had 
proved he was right. There was no Man, for he 
had not been stricken dead ! It fairly makes me 
laugh now to think of that wretched green-fly ! 

"My friend, it is an insult to compare you 
and the green-fly, man and God. The smallest 
bacillus known is a monstrous giant in size and 
wisdom in relation to a man compared with you 
and God. Do you suppose ^iat words such as 
yours would affect God? I tell you honestly I 
do not suppose He even hears you when you 
speak so." 

It was a smart answer, but, my dear, I cannot 
say I like it. I think I would have put it differ- 
ently. Suppose a father to be at play with his 
little son, who is just getting strong enough to 
love to hit out at his father, as boys will, and 
who is beginning to think he is really strong. 



OF THE BEST IN LIFE 85 

Suddenly the little fellow gets annoyed because 

his father is such an immovable giant and won't 

hit back. His father is obviously playing with 

him, he thinks, and he is big now, and serious. 

He's no baby now! So he loses his temper. "I 

won't play with you, Dadda," he shouts; 

"you're a nasty, horrid dadda ! I don't believe 

you can hit if you want to! Hit me, if you 

dare ! Kill me, if you dare ! ' ' 

What do you suppose the father would do? 

If he were very wise and loving and kind, I 

think he would say nothing, but just go away. 

And towards the end of the day, when his little 

son was tired with playing alone and very sorry 

for himself, he would come back and pick him 

up in his arms, and carry him off to bed, and 

tuck him up, and kiss him. 

# * # * # 

That is my answer, dear. The best in life is 
the search for God, and it does not matter so 
very much if one hardly knows it or does not 
find Him, for the best beyond will be His Kiss. 



10. OF AAEON AND GAMALIEL 

OH dear! It's a strange old world! If I 
can set down for you the thoughts that 
have been filling my head while jogging 
along all this day over a mountain trail all but 
obliterated by the heavy rains (so that we had 
to scramble like cats up rock surfaces with 
practically no foothold, and make new ways 
down for ourselves over slithery, wet grass), 
you will see why I think it strange, and perhaps 
why I find it to be so very, very old — two 
thousand very long years at least. But I am 
not sure that I can give you the impression that 
is left on my own mind. For it is only an 
impression, however correct. A few words and 
an attitude, that is all. Our conversation will 
not strike you much unless you realise what lies 
behind it. 

We arrived last night at an out-station which 
I had never visited before. There is a little 
bare, rectangular Church school there and a 
little stone hut, both sheltered under a great 
cliff of rock and fronting a semicircular 
meadow that runs down to a stream. The view 
northwards is superb. The mountain chains 
rise ever higher and higher, one running into 

86 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL 87 

another, until the black, forbidding peaks 
mingle in a great barrier upon which rest the 
clouds. The people are said to live all around, 
but most of them are hours away and quite out 
of sight. The church and the hut themselves 
seem to stand in a vast empty world. 

The catechist had heard of my coming, and 
had descended from his hidden hut on the top 
of the cliffs behind to meet me. We were 
strangers to each other, and he eager to see me 
and eager for what I would do. After a few 
greetings he plunged into the matter that lay 
uppermost in his mind: "Had the father come 
to examine the school! " 

I fear the father had not. I try to make a 
point of talking to the children of each school 
I visit about the religious teaching they are sup- 
posed to get, but the business of examinations 
in the three E 's, which takes a couple of days or 
more if one does all the standards properly, is 
not much in my line, and ought not to be, I 
think, in my province. Here it certainly was 
not. It was not my school, and in any case I 
had not the time. 

"No," said I, "I have come to shrive the 
people and say Mass." And at that he was 
perplexed. He begged my pardon; he did not 
understand. I repeated myself, and now used 
the words "Holy Communion." 

"Oh," said he, "the father means the Sup- 
per ! ' ' And his eager face fell. Now I hardly 



88 PILGRIM PAPERS 

meant the Supper. To me the Holy Com- 
munion was instituted at the last Supper, but 
was not that supper, and the Church early dis- 
tinguished between the Love Feast, which was 
the Supper, and the Eucharist, which was very 
soon separated from it. All that I could hardly 
explain just then, but his use of the word told 
so much. Wherever you hear it, it means that 
the people are Protestant rather than Catholic. 
But I did my best. "No," I said. "I always 
have my supper in the evening. But I mean 
that I have come to hear the people's confes- 
sions and give them the Sacrament of our 
Lord's Body and Blood to-morrow morning. ,, 

At this he still looked a little perplexed, but 
he said he was delighted, and he was sure the 
people would be. "They must be early," I 
said, "as I have far to ride afterwards." 

"They will be in about one o'clock," he said. 
"They live far ..." 

And at that my heart sank, for it told me a 
great deal that the people should be accustomed 
to come in at one o 'clock to meet their priest. 

Well, I will cut all this short. As a matter of 
fact, I could not stay till past midday or go to 
the altar then, if I did, and I said mass the next 
morning with only the three of us present, and 
gave the teacher communion. He made what 
he called a confession, but it was perfectly plain 
that what he and I meant by confession were 
two different things. And as to my mass — well, 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL 89 

bless the dear fellow, he hardly knew what I 
was about. Cyril knew, however, and somehow 
I had great joy in pleading our Saviour's in- 
finite merit for that place. 

But, once in the saddle, thoughts crowded in 
my mind. Up in these mountains, alone, among 
people taught by me and used to me, one grows 
singularly forgetful. I hardly realise, I think, 
to what I have half unconsciously come and 
what a cleavage exists between my work and 
this of my brother whose out-station I am on. 
These last three weeks, for example, as I re- 
viewed them in my mind, I began to perceive 
that I had done no more than administer the 
Sacraments in place after place — all five of 
them that a priest can administer. I have been 
riding around as a kind of vehicle for sacra- 
mental grace. A priest who so regards his office 
scarcely conceives himself at all. It is not my 
words or my exhortations that matter, not my 
wisdom in elaborating sermons, not my job to 
examine schools. I come, in accordance with 
the Divine plan, to allow the grace of God to 
flow through me to these people. My main 
endeavour is to keep the channel clean, and to 
administer zealously and correctly. I mean I 
just try to say my own prayers and to perform 
my rites as they should be performed. That 
takes nearly all the time. 

Of course I do not mean that I have no regard 
to the faith and understanding of the people. 



90 PILGRIM PAPERS 

That would be absurd. But, you see, the whole 
outlook is different. The people do not gather 
to listen to my preaching; I do not sit down 
overnight and make up ingenious and pious dis- 
courses out of the Psalms, and so on. I used to 
do that sort of thing. I would take a Psalm and 
discover, for example, that the words " Deliver 
me" occurred three times. "Deliver me" 
"from temptation," point one; "deliver me" 
"in the mire and clay," i.e., in sin, point two; 
"deliver me" — "in the time of trouble," point 
three. On that, with introduction and conclu- 
sion and with appropriate illustrations, I would 
make up a discourse, and we would sing some 
nice hymns. But now it is quite different. I 
hear confessions, and try to deal with each soul 
as it shows, however imperfectly, its need. I 
say some simple, obvious mass, like that of the 
Sacred Heart ; and, crucifix or picture in hand, 
I point out briefly what is the wounding of His 
Heart still, and how on this very rude altar in 
a few minutes the same Christ will offer Him- 
self as the still wounded Lamb for our salva- 
tion. I hold up the crucifix between the seated 
people and their God in Heaven. "So," I say, 
"Christ on the Cross interposed between the 
world and God's wrath on account of sin." 
Then I lift the chalice and the paten. "Here," 
I say, "will be in a moment that same Christ, 
and I shall set Him again between you and that 
same wrath. Not that God is wrath; He is 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL 91 

Love, such Love that His Victim, dispelling the 
black clouds that gather on account of sin, will 
once more enable you, the children of God, to 
see the smiling of the Father's Face." 

My dear, my pen has carried me away, but do 
you see the difference? I remember once, as 
a young man, speaking on an ingenious acrostic 
(the kind of thing we loved) which ran: 



"J 


esus 


E 


xactly 


S uits 


U 


s 


s 


inners." 



But do you know I always missed the true 
explanation of that second word? He does 
exactly suit us sinners, not because the remem- 
brance of Him moves us to sorrow and good 
resolutions, not because He did something 
years ago in which we can mystically and retro- 
spectively share, not as if we were all feelings 
and souls. He exactly suits us because we are 
men of minds and bodies to-day, and to-day He 
will do for us visibly and invisibly, corporally 
and spiritually, mind and body, in other words 
sacramentally, what God has ordained as the 
method of salvation. 

Now here you have two totally distinct 
religions, perfectly exemplified in my little visit 
to that out-station. For the moment I am not 
writing to you as to my view of the right or 



92 PILGRIM PAPERS 

wrong of either, but I do want you to see what 
I mean. I came thinking myself a doctor of 
spiritual medicines; I was expected as a 
prophet. I came to do things ; I was expected 
to say things. I came to work in virtue of my 
office; I was expected by virtue of my colour 
and education. I came to teach the Christians 
incidentally, the heathen directly; I was ex- 
pected by both classes in the same way. I came 
as a son of Aaron, a Levite ; I was expected as 
a son of Gamaliel, a Rabbi. 

You might, of course, argue that I ought to 
have come as both, and that it is the wisdom of 
the Church of England to keep the mean be- 
tween the two extremes; and in the latter 
matter, at any rate, you would have been right. 
That is precisely Anglicanism; that is un- 
doubtedly what my brother of this missionary 
diocese would say. But I feel that this attempt 
on the part of the Anglican Church has been a 
sorry failure, and that nowhere is that failure 
better seen than in the Mission Field. Here, for 
example, where the Anglican view has been 
taught, the expectation of the prophet far out- 
weighs the coming of the priest. And it always 
tends to do so, because you cannot hold logically 
and inevitably as a matter of fact that the two 
offices are of equal importance. If you do, then 
the sacramental side sinks, and finally sinks out 
of sight. For if the Sacraments are but means 
of grace, I doubt that they are such good means 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL . 93 

as a fervent discourse or a wise examination of 
children, especially if one has scarcely time to 
do both. 

But if the Sacraments are the actual means 
of salvation, then the rest is but a secondary 
help to them. If, for example, the Sacrament 
of Penance — Confession — is the Divine plan for 
the forgiveness of sins, then naturally, what- 
ever I do, I must do that ; if, on the other hand, 
it is only a help to some people who cannot quiet 
their consciences, then probably a good sound 
sermon on penitence and the recitation of the 
General Confession will suit the case. What 
doctor, attending a man with a broken limb, 
would omit first and at once to set it? Neces- 
sary as the giving of a good dietary would be, 
that would be pretty useless without the other. 
His directions would be secondary and supple- 
mentary to his bone-setting. And the bone- 
setting is to a Catholic the Sacrament, the 
dietary the sermon. 

Now underneath all this lies a much deeper 
thing, I think, a thing which is the crux of the 
whole matter. To me it seems that at the bot- 
tom of Protestantism is Rationalism, and at the 
bottom of Catholicism Revelation, however 
much the one may be disguised, or the other 
defended by reason. Revelation involves the 
hypothesis that God has shown something to 
men which they would not have found out by 
themselves, that He has committed something 



94 PILGRIM PAPERS 

to them, given them a plan, arranged a scheme. 
He has shown what He wants and how He 
wants it — that is the point; and the conclusion 
is that this must be safeguarded, continued, and 
obeyed. Man's primary duty will lie in these 
three things, and however much he may justify 
them by rational arguments, or apply in their 
working rational intelligence, the fundamental 
idea is that the scheme is not his and does not 
need his defence. Thus to the Catholic Christ 
came into the world and founded the Church 
and the Sacramental System, that System safe- 
guarded by that Church, to be a royal ladder 
into heaven. Church and System are some- 
thing bigger than ourselves and beyond our- 
selves. There are rational arguments by which 
they may be explained, justified, and all but 
proved, but ultimately "The Word was made 
Flesh,' ' "Upon this Rock I will build My 
Church' ' — these are superrational, super- 
human, supernatural. It is ours to fall in with 
them, to serve them. And the minister of such 
a theory is not only of necessity a priest, but a 
priest after a certain order. This Divine 
scheme has its human side, and the human side, 
because it is human, must be regular, ordered, 
and in a sense, rigid. No man or body can as- 
sume such a priesthood, and determine the man- 
ner of its assumption. The stone has been laid; 
the faith has been delivered; the one cannot be 
dug up and settled down in a new order, and 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL 95 

the other cannot be reconsidered and corrected. 
Indeed, it is of the essence of things that if the 
faith needs correction, then the faith has failed. 
Now, Protestantism, although most of its sects 
would claim some such supernatural basis, has, 
in point of fact, relaid the stone and reconsidered 
the faith. Of course each sect believes that it 
has relaid the stone according to the since mis- 
placed original, and corrected the faith back to 
its original purity, but the very fact that such 
relaying and correcting have been carries with 
it the assumption of Eationalism. Some- 
body — some man — judged that there had been a 
mistake, and that something else was intended. 
There are about 300 different Protestant sects ; 
that is, there are about 300 judgments correct- 
ing what has come to be back to what it is 
judged to have been. And the inevitable fol- 
lows. Luther judged that the original was not 
what he saw the Church of his day to be, but 
after another model ; it is obviously open to the 
sons of Luther to judge that he was mistaken. 
They have so judged, as likewise have the sons 
of Calvin, Wesley, Spurgeon, Fox, Cranmer, 
and a host more of their spiritual fathers. In 
fact, this work of judging has become the 
primary work of a Christian. So Luther said, 
"It belongs to every Christian to know and to 
judge for himself of doctrine." Thus Eation- 
alism, the application of human reason and 
knowledge, modifies what is alleged to be the 



96 PILGRIM PAPERS 

original deposit. And since admittedly human 
knowledge is growing, it stands to reason that 
the dogmas of religion are in a state of flux. In 
a word, there are no dogmas, which is, indeed, 
the pronouncement of modern reasonable 
Protestants. And in the Mission Field, how- 
ever much with child races we have to be 
authoritative, our end is that they shall come to 
think for themselves, and determine for them- 
selves, while our plan of campaign will tend to 
be moral exhortation far more than dogmatic 
ministrations of rites and ceremonies. 

Of course Catholicism itself may be simply 
the result of the rationalism of St. Paul, as the 
German critics would have us believe, or the 
result of the rationalism of Greek philosophers 
in the first four centuries, as Mr. H. G. Wells 
insists. But even so, the Catholic is essentially 
a person who does not rationalise, and he has 
always done his best not to do so. To-day he 
acts still as if such rationalisation was contrary 
to the nature of things, and hence the conduct 
of the Catholic priest, as chiefly an adminis- 
trator of sacred rites, in the Mission Field. 
Catholicism is essentially different from 
Protestantism because of this point of view. 
After all, the Catholic attitude has passed into a 
proverb: "Borne changes not." Driven to ex- 
plain the difference between Peter and Pius, a 
Newman urges development, growth. Driven 
to defend the insinuation that non-rational be- 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL 97 

ings ought to be in a lunatic asylum, a Benson 
urges that the rational proofs of Faith are not 
so much non-rational as supernatural. But, 
either way or any way, the stubborn Catholic 
will not admit that his religion is of human de- 
vising, and in that very refusal, be it originally 
right or wrong, he is involved in the con- 
sequences of the acceptance of Eevelation. He 
is chained to the Apostolic Succession, and his 
religion is the Sacramental System. 

The Church of England attempted, it seems 
to me, to run with the hare and hunt with the 
hounds. The Eeformation Anglican Fathers 
rationalised about the seven Sacraments, and 
decided that two only were of Christ's revela- 
tion and thus "generally necessary for salva- 
tion.' ? They rationalised about Episcopacy, 
and decided that the Pope was of human origin, 
but Prelacy of Divine. Across the Border their 
brethren rationalised a bit more, and made 
Prelacy human and the Presbyter Divine. And 
across the Border back again the Puritans 
rationalised that no ministry was Divine at all. 
One and all they were rationalists. 

Incidentally there is no greater rationalist 
than the non-Catholic, who maintains that the 
words of the sixteenth century Bible are 
verbally and infallibly the revelation of God. 
He is the rational son of Luther. That re- 
former, declining to believe that the Church was 
the pillar and ground of the truth, appealed to 



98 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the Bible or to such books of the Catholic Bible 
as he himself selected ; but he did not rationalise 
much about the nature of his new authority. 
His sons, driven to defend themselves, evolved 
a theory of verbal inspiration which was 
neither his nor the Church's, and which, of all 
theories, is the least possible to-day. Yet such 
rationalists are they that now the shrinking 
relic is driven to attempting to prove by ingen- 
ious twistings that Moses anticipated Newton 
and that the author of Genesis was a scientific 
historian, and then demands the acceptance of 
irrational dogmas upon the authority of a few 
specially selected and privately explained texts. 

This is a dull letter. Will you even read it, I 
wonder? Forgive me. Up and down the hills, 
plodding along at not much more than a foot- 
pace, I have been thinking it all through again 
this morning, and it will out. That poor little 
catechist on the out-station, how surprised he 
would be if he knew — he and his supper ! But 
it does so matter to me. Is it a supper, or is it 
the mass? who shall say? If there be no one to 
say, and if I have to go back to musty books 
and bewildering histories to find out, I shall 
cast in my vote for the supper quickly enough. 

But it seems to me that there is one arresting, 
amazing, bewildering, imperious Personality 
who dares to speak in this world of little men, 
a Personality that moves with a strange 
secrecy, and yet may be found easily enough on 



OF AARON AND GAMALIEL 99 

every highway and in every back lane of the 
world, a Personality as old as the Seven Hills 
and yet so radiantly young. If you have not 
come across this mysterious, wonderful Being, 
it is almost useless for me to write to you, and 
I do not suppose Almighty God will hold you to 
blame. Yet it seems to me that I have been 
called aside into the garden and have been 
shown wonderful things, incredible though it 
seems to me that I should have been called at 
all, wonderful things, amazing things, super- 
natural things, things of beauty beyond the 
glory of sun, moon, and stars, things of wisdom, 
which I can only see to be very wise, tender 
things of which I cannot speak even to you. 
And it is no good — I cannot resist the conclu- 
sion. " Never man spoke as this Man." "He 
hath done all things well." "He maketh the 
deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." "He 
bindeth up the broken-hearted, and He giveth 
medicine to heal their sicknesses." Such sen- 
tences were written of the Christ, and such are 
true again to-day. But I cannot understand it ; 
this wisdom is beyond me, this medicine a 
bitter thing. Yet to whom else shall we go? 
Here, at least, are words of eternal life. 



11. OF A VILLAGE UNDER THE MOON 

THEY always say there is no loneliness 
like that of a stranger in a big European 
city in which he knows no one, but that 
entirely depends on the money in his pocket. If 
he has plenty, he need not be lonely for long. 
I have been in a good few big European cities 
without a friend, and even without much money, 
but I have never felt really lonely — at least, not 
more lonely than I wanted to feel and rather 
enjoyed. The world is, as a matter of fact, 
superficially very friendly. The great axiom 
that man is a social animal lies deep down in 
most men, and a cheerful person can make 
acquaintances in an hotel, or a bar, or a church, 
or the street as easily as possible. And quite 
often he can make friends, and the best of 
friends, too, the friends that chance has thrown 
his way, and not the friends who have sought 
him out because of what his profession may be 
or his social rank or his circumstances. Even 
more, they may be the sort of friends one would 
never make in any other way, and a man may 
come to see God in the soul of a street-girl, or 
humanity in the heart of a capitalist, if he is all 
by himself in a city. 

100 



OF A VILLAGE UNDER THE MOON 101 

No, there are many worse lonelinesses than 
this, and there is one I am always experiencing 
on trek and from which I cannot get away. Do 
you know the cheerfulness of an African village 
on a fine night of a full moon? The hnts lie 
scattered on the hillside without order, and all 
opening eastwards. Each household has two 
or three such huts, often two at least knit up by 
the big semicircular reed-fence called the 
lelapa, and the little paths thread in and out of 
the big boulders between each group. The chief 
will have his big cattle-kraal of piled stones 
below his collection of huts, and most likely 
there will be several more smaller ones up the 
hillside. The sun has set, then; the girls have 
come back with the water, and the boys from the 
milking with the brown jars of milk, for you 
know no woman may milk, or even enter the 
cattle-kraal when the cattle are there, on the 
Berg. "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his 
mother's milk, ,, says the Old Testament, a 
piece of sympathetic magic, according to Pro- 
fessor Frazer, which has its like in our modern 
African custom. Anyway the cattle are kraaled, 
and within the reed fences the cheerful dung- 
fires are lit. Cyril has brought me my porridge, 
and it is not yet time for prayers. I wander 
out under the moon, and I feel terribly, awfully 
alone. 

The air is full of little noises. The cows in 
the kraal are licking their calves, and all to- 



102 PILGRIM PAPERS 

getlier chew the cud with a slow sound of con- 
tentment. There is cheerful loud talk from the 
chief's house, and the laugh of a woman away 
up on the hill in a far group of huts. A band of 
children, the moon shining on their bodies, run 
out of the shadows and chase each other, then 
dive in at the low reed doors and cuddle up to- 
gether round the boiling pot on the fire. You 
can hear their childish talk inside, but if you are 
I, you do not understand most of it, any more 
than I can understand what the men are saying 
to Cyril in the dark yonder, although I can 
catch a clear question or reply of his occasion- 
ally. The village Sesuto on such nights is 
abbreviated, colloquial, friendly. It is the 
chaffing talk of an inn-parlour at home, the 
mysterious, jovial slang of a cheerful club. I 
can get along on the lines of the grammar or 
prayer book, but neither (the sorrow of it!) 
are really human lines. 

I have told you of times and villages in which 
I have sat friendly by a fire or talked with chil- 
dren, but I realise to-night how rare they are. 
True, the children playing in the moonlight are 
not afraid of me, and they will smile if I go 
near, but I am the mysterious white stranger, 
and the play will drift off if I move. Heathen 
men round the fire will lapse into silence if I 
come up, or, more educated, ask me questions 
that often veil a half -felt racial hostility ; Chris- 
tians will speak cautiously, fearful lest they 



OF A VILLAGE UNDER THE MOON 103 

give their own folk away, never forgetful that I 
am white and a priest. Nine nights out of ten, 
in most villages anyway, I have no friend. 

Two things fight against me: my colour and 
my office. Mr. Cripps has a yarn of a white 
man who had to take to Mashona dress and 
customs to avoid the law, and I often wish I 
could do something like that. I would so like to 
get inside my people. Possibly I never should ; 
possibly, if I did, I should wish I had not. Pos- 
sibly I might even come to envy Mr. Cripps' 
hero's fate of the mistaken grains of white 
powder and the lonely little krantz. But I wish 
I could try. 

The priest, too — I wonder if you realise how 
often he is terribly alone. I do not know which 
is the worse, to be treated by others as if one 
were one among them or to be treated plainly 
as something different. If the first, one is con- 
tinually being stabbed by the different outlooks 
and values of men in the world, and one is 
always half longing, half dreading, to let one- 
self go ; if the second, oh, my dear, but that bur- 
den is so hard to bear! Speaking quite truly 
and reverently, Jesus must have felt it so. 
Never was there lonely man as He. God-Man, 
on earth — what isolation! We priests are the 
only ones who can know. 

But even this is not all in my case. To-night 
I climbed up above the village and perched my- 
self on a big stone to see it all. And I saw so 



104 PILGRIM PAPERS 

much more than the village. Here am I, neither 
a good Anglican nor a recognised Catholic, the 
suspect of my own communion and the outcast 
of the other. It does so hurt to feel that there 
is no place in what ought to be home for me. I 
know I seem to many of my brethren and 
superiors a disloyal, wilful, disobedient son, so 
I do not blame them ; besides, if the truth must 
out, they seem to me singularly fussy, cob- 
webby, blind, and, to be quite honest, dull, and, 
indeed, they would be incredibly foolish if they 
were not glad that I am on the Berg, more or 
less out of harm's way, and certainly buried. 
But, despite all mutual understanding, the fact 
remains. It is terribly lonely, dear, to know 
oneself in a communion but not of it, and to feel 
that work done is work that the leaders will 
prefer not to own. This is not a grumble, mark 
you. I do not honestly think that it has made 
any difference. But there it is, and very lonely 
on the Berg. 

It is in the evenings such as this that I feel it 
most. By day, riding along, I hardly even mind 
not having a friend to talk to, there is so much 
to see and think about. Besides, I think I am 
growing accustomed to not having friends. 
"There is no friend for the stranger save the 
stranger' ' — that is a Eussian saying of great 
beauty. Still I have a great number of friendly 
acquaintances, more than most people, perhaps, 
for I always seem to make such easily, and 



OF A VILLAGE UNDER THE MOON 105 

always did. But friends are different, and they 
grow fewer. I remember a priest in Africa, a 
tall, spare, kindly man who was looking in the 
face a slow death from disease, talking once to 
me and saying that he found, as one grew older, 
that one came to rely less and less on friends. 
A man made friends, and thought he had made 
them for his life; and then one married, and 
another got into some other environment, and 
slowly, imperceptibly, without either wishing it, 
friendship faded away. (I shall never forget 
that he said it quite bravely, with a smile.) Is 
that not extraordinarily true! Of course there 
are people whom one likes immensely and with 
whom it is possible really to renew a friendship 
from time to time, but the long and the short of 
it is that it seems to me one grows to realise the 
inevitableness of being alone. We began alone, 
and we certainly end alone, but I think one 
comes to feel more and more how true it is that 
nobody really understands, nobody really sym- 
pathises, and that nobody can. 

The moulding years ought to make one more 
indifferent to this, I think, because they ought 
to make one stronger, and fashion one's mind 
to resolute thinking, and to decisions which one 
feels are right for oneself at all events. At 
school and college, and for some years after, 
one wonders continually how others will criti- 
cise, and one strives to gain a place to justify 
oneself. A man, at any rate, meeting the con- 



106 PILGRIM PAPERS 

flict of ideas in religion and social life, is 
anxions about them, and wants continually to 
know what other people think. He wants, too, 
to share his conclusions, to strengthen himself 
by making friends with whom he can breast the 
current of life. But as the years go by he gets 
not so much disappointed, but less interested. 
He begins to feel that others cannot help over- 
much, and that it does not much matter if they 
do not. He himself for himself must look up 
into the eyes of God, and it is no use, then, 
looking deprecatingly round to see what one's 
friends are doing. 

Even love looks to me (at least to-night) the 
last and most desperate attempt to escape our 
inevitable loneliness. The man and the woman 
look into each other's eyes, and they think they 
see understanding and union for all time. They 
always say how they would like to get right 
away by themselves and just live for each 
other all the time. Surely every one in love has 
felt that. In heroic novels the man wants his 
girl to help him to do heroic deeds, and so on, 
but only in novels, I think. He never really 
wants that, for when he is in love he does not 
care two straws about heroic deeds. Nature is 
not thinking of heroic deeds, and she is too 
strong for both of them. They may come back, 
as it were, and possibly hand to hand, to the 
conquest of life, but at the moment all they 
want is to forget the world in each other. 



OF A VILLAGE UNDER THE MOON 107 

Of course I may be wrong, but I think the 
sense of alliance is chiefly an illusion. It is not 
merely that the current of life tends to bring 
different duties and influences in their way, but 
deep down, when Nature is tired of them, hav- 
ing fulfilled her purpose, they rub their eyes 
and wake up as from a dream to find that each 
has a separate soul and a lonely one. Possibly 
those people who seem to be able to forget that 
they have a soul at all never feel this, but I do 
not think there are many such. 

If this is so, what do you suppose one ought 
to do? The Berg teaches, I think, especially in 
a native village by night. The great, lonely 
hills, the silent, lonely stars, the dumb, uncom- 
plaining earth, all speak. They tell you just to 
face the facts, and not complain. They tell you 
not to hedge and fight against the truth, but to 
go out and on and to take what comes of friend- 
ship and of love gladly, but undeceived. There 
is no final shelter for one's naked soul. Our 
mother's skirts sheltered us when we were 
kiddies, but only for a while. So it is with 
everything and every one, until one comes at 
last to see that one may hide in God, but never 
from Him. 



12. OF THE LOVE OF GOD 

MY dear, a very curious and tender little 
affair occurred this morning, on which 
I have been meditating all day. There 
is nothing in it, really, or I suppose not, and yet 
a mystic would certainly feel otherwise. How 
I wish one knew if Almighty God really plots 
these things! The Gospel is not a sure guide, 
for if we are told that not a sparrow falls to the 
ground without our Father, the inference cer- 
tainly is that the fall of the Tower of Siloam 
was not designed. Yet nothing can occur out- 
side His Will, and I suppose all things are but 
shadows of reality. So it may be that I saw 
what I was meant to see, and that I understand 
what I was meant to understand. At any rate, 
this was the way of it. 

We had been riding, Cyril and I, for the 
whole morning along the high path that leads to 
the north. It is a hot, stony, trying road, at a 
level of some nine thousand feet, and the 
ground is barer there than any for miles 
around. There is a view, it is true, a view to 
the right of the border peaks, across a wide, 
hard valley, and to the left a tumbled mass of 
mountains that melt into the horizon. The sky 

108 



OF THE LOVE OF GOD 109 

is truly a huge inverted bowl over all. Not a 
cloud flecked it to-day, and I, with a slight touch 
of fever, felt it to be brooding and terrible. I 
have ridden this path and sung along it as I 
went, deeming the heavens a perfect parable of 
the Love of God, so immense, eternal, and all 
covering. I have felt how one cannot escape 
from the Love of God, or change it, and how, 
no matter what one does beneath, still beyond 
the imagination, north, south, east, and west, 
God is Love. The very clouds, earth-born 
things, are no part of that infinite blue space 
where the light of countless suns passes eter- 
nally on swift errands of life. 

But it was all otherwise to-day. I was very 
tired and very hot, and my head ached. The 
ponies seemed to travel so slowly, and yet it 
was impossible to speed them up. I made rest- 
less, irritated efforts, and then the great scorch- 
ing vault overwhelmed me, and I held the reins 
in loose fingers and rode in growing pain. I 
thought the sky was still like God, but to-day 
He was inexorable and pitiless, as He so often 
seems. But is He ever? 

At any rate, towards midday we reached a 
place where the road curved to the right to 
avoid a sharp face of rock. It seemed to me 
that to ofT-saddle there might offer a chance of 
shade in some crevice of that cliff, and so I 
called to Cyril, and dismounted. I staggered 
along to the left over broken and falling 



110 PILGRIM PAPERS 

ground, and found what I wanted, a small cave 
that offered a refuge from the sun. In my 
flask was a little lukewarm tea, so I had a drink 
and lay down to sleep for half an hour if I 
could. But I could not sleep for a long time. 
I lay with closed eyes and aching head, and I 
dare not tell you all I thought. Men are crea- 
tures of mood universally, I suppose, but some 
of us are worse than others. There are times 
when I cannot see what end is served by my 
existence, and when I am all one great revolt. 
Yet how one dreads to die ! It is curious. One 
may not fear the beyond; one may not shrink, 
I think, from the passing; but one dreads to 
leave this grim school with all the problems un- 
solved, and the discipline not learned. It could 
only mean worse on the other side, and maybe 
the eternal loss of all our dreams. 

Well, then, I suppose I dozed off. At any 
rate, I woke up later feeling better, but thirsty ; 
and sitting up to see if I could find a spring 
somewhere, I saw what I had not somehow 
noticed before. A few hundred yards away was 
a break in the face of the cliff, and growing up 
out of it, as often happens in the Berg, were 
some wild poplars, whose shimmering leaves 
just appeared above the rocks. I thought that 
a spring might well be there, and I made for the 
place, walking slowly in the heat. Skirting 
some huge boulders, I could see at last up the 
crevasse, and noticed at once that the place had 



OF THE LOVE OF GOD 111 

been converted into a cattle kraal. The face of 
the hill sloped over except where the split oc- 
curred, and a low wall of stone had been built 
out round it to enclose a sheltered spot. At one 
corner the wall reached the cliff ; at the other it 
stopped at the thick press of young poplars. 
And there was a break in the middle of it for 
the beasts to enter. 

I moved forward to that break idly, for no 
water could be immediately there, and there, 
in the very door, stood stock-still with surprise. 
Where the poplars grew right at the cliff's foot 
sat a young native woman, and she had a baby 
at her breast. Behind her, staring down at her, 
was a native in a blanket, leaning on a stick, and 
I could not see his face in the shadow ; while in 
front, with some half-dozen sheep of the kraal, 
was a herd-boy, a wisp of rag about his middle, 
squatting there on his hams, his back to me, and 
a gourd of water in his hands. It was as if he 
offered a gift. 

None of us moved at all while the seconds 
slipped by. I stood there in the sun, and 
emotion flooded through me. Oh, I daresay it 
was stupid beyond words, but it was so abso- 
lutely a nativity. There was nothing missing, 
nothing wrong, not even my hard, stubborn 
heart and my bitter thoughts. In the moment 
of my thought of God's aloofness, there had 
been given me a vision of His humanity. 

We hear so much in these days of the fashion- 



112 PILGRIM PAPERS 

ing of God to human imagination. Our thinkers 
are always pushing Him farther and farther 
away, till we are told that just as it was the 
half-savage thought of Moses that conceived he 
had seen God's "back parts," so it is our still 
anthropomorphic conceptions that allow us to 
believe in the Incarnation and to speak of His 
Face and Heart. You remember that Mr. Wells 
offers us only a dim Veiled Being, or, on the 
other hand, a God that is but half a God, since 
He is no more powerful, no more sure of attain- 
ment, than we ourselves. Mr. Wells says he 
does not name two Gods, but one; only that 
Veiled Being, too veiled for us to glimpse even 
in the moments of our strongest vision, Whom 
somehow our thought must create to fill a gap, 
broods, despite our banishment of Him, like a 
nightmare over all. It seems impossible that 
He shall have nothing to say. But even if He 
be Love, what sort of love will His be! Not a 
human love, at any rate. His thought must be 
in another category to ours, and His love as 
well, if He could remain veiled and watch the 
passion of the centuries. 

Is this human love in God for which we crave. 
You know what I mean? A dog may love you, 
and you may love a dog, but what a poor busi- 
ness it is ! It is not merely that he is made dif- 
ferently from us, and cannot share our joys 
and sorrows with real understanding. There is 
something much deeper that is missing : the call 



OF THE LOVE OF GOD 113 

of human heart to heart, the yearning for rest 
the one in the other, that terrible longing for a 
refuge and completion in the other's love that 
belongs, so far as we know, only to human 
hearts. 

Suppose God has that! Suppose He really 
understands just what we feel, not understand- 
ing as you might conceive Allah to understand, 
by an effort of His omniscience, but under- 
standing because His Heart throbs as ours 
throb ! How wonderful it would be ! He would 
know how terrible life is if such love be 
thwarted, how resistless such love is in its de- 
mands. He would surely only stretch His hands 
out in fatherly tenderness when we fled together 
for refuge to Him. 

I wonder what He wants. I wonder if He 
wants us to love Him as we love one another. 
Do you know, I think not quite that, but I think 
that what He wants is just exactly what I have 
said, that we should love and yet have room for 
Him, and together take our love to Him, as our 
best treasure, that He may joy in it. I think 
He will be glad one day if we come saying : " 
Father, even our brethren forgot what we felt, 
but we know that You remember. Neither 
heaven nor hell will shelter us, and so we come 
to You . . ." 

That might be the meaning of Bethlehem, and 
of the rest of that wonderful life, not merely 
the working out of a purpose of salvation, but 



114 PILGRIM PAPERS 

an exhibition of His secret mind. It is as if He 
had smiled and said: "They will never guess 
what I am unless I show them. Let Me cradle 
at a mother 's breast, let Me go up to a marriage 
feast, let Me weep at the tomb of a brother, let 
Me be kissed by lips of sin, let My Name among 
archangels and men be a simple baby name, and 
they will know by that that My eyes are tender 
when two lovers kiss ..." 

The old man stirred in the shadows, and the 
herd-boy moved easily to his feet. The girl 
looked up, and I caught her eyes. God and I 
were glad. 



13. OF THE TOUCHING OF THE WORLD 
INTANGIBLE 

YOU have been calling to me all day, 
calling as really, it lias seemed to me, as 
if it were your voice, and not that of the 
herd-boys that echoed from time to time in the 
valley through which we rode. I have heard 
you persistently above the song of the stream, 
above the colours of the flowers, even above the 
depth of the blue sky and the shining of the sun. 
More than that, I think you have been calling 
in and through them, though of that I am not 
certain. If they are what I suspect, I should 
be sure, but since I cannot tell what they are, I 
am only certain of your voice. 

I wonder very much if you know that you 
have been calling and that I have been hearing 
but though I wonder, I have not the least desire 
to prove it in the way that some seem to wish. 
That seems to me an idle thing. It would, in- 
deed, be to me almost sacrilegious if I were to 
try to find out how far you knew what you 
were about, how far purposeful; it is enough 
that your soul has been wistful for me to-day, 
and I know it. Why, like Thomas, should I 
want to thrust my hands into the print of the 

115 



116 PILGRIM PAPERS 

nails ? That there have been wounds, and that 
the wounds endure, is far more real to me than 
any print of them. 

They say that the world is crazy after Spirit- 
ualism in these days, and even up here on the 
Berg echoes of this newest unrest reach us. The 
subject is, of course, intensely interesting in its 
own way, but I want to write it down for you 
that I have to make a big effort to get the 
modern Spiritualists' point of view, though I 
could easily have been a necromancer in the 
days of the Old Testament ! I suppose the great 
explanation is that vast numbers of modern 
Europeans grow up without a religion, or with 
the merest shreds of a religion, and these shreds 
based on no sure foundation at all. Then comes 
a shock, like the losses of relations and friends 
in the War, and people find they have nothing 
on which to rest. But those of us who have a 
religion like the Catholic Faith simply do not 
want Spiritualism. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
accuses the "clergy of the Churches," I see, 
of belittling or neglecting his great discoveries, 
but the clergy of the Catholic Faith have been 
teaching the principal tenets of Spiritualism all 
the centuries of the Christian Era. Sir Arthur 
Conan Doyle must, I suppose, being an educated 
man, have made some inquiries concerning the 
Catholic Religion, but he cannot know the 
Catholic Faith. If, as a medical man, he had 
gone to Lourdes instead of to clairvoyants, he 



TOUCHING OF THE WORLD INTANGIBLE 117 

would have found stories the equal of any of 
his as evidence of survival and of the after-life. 
The records of the Saints, down to those of this 
century, offer evidence as well authenticated as 
and far more reasonable than the records of 
Spiritualism. And then there is our Lord, 
Whom we know to be living. 

One wonders what will happen in this 
strangely mixed age. Possibly, one of these 
days, the popular monthlies and a man or two 
who can win the attention of their editors and 
their readers will discover the Catholic Eeligion. 
Meantime the world, having laughed to scorn 
fifty years ago the " materialism " of St. John 
and the New Testament generally, is eagerly 
inquiring of what material the spirits build 
their houses in "Summerland," and rejoicing 
in the fact that one may obtain there even 
whisky and cigars. 

It seems to me, then, that a Catholic may take 
an extreme interest in psychology, and study 
it; may investigate eagerly supernatural occur- 
rences and seek to co-ordinate the laws that 
govern them; and may well walk through this 
world with his spiritual eyes and ears open; 
Indeed I marvel that he can do otherwise. 
Since we know well enough that man "sur- 
vives"; that he passes into fuller life in the 
great enveloping spiritual world; that that 
world has frequent communication with this; 
that there are established avenues by which one 



118 PILGRIM PAPERS 

may come to the threshold and pass over; and 
that we have to hand a great Divine machinery 
for the exchange of influence between that world 
and this, this world and that — since we know all 
these things, how can we fail to make use of 
them? But of what use to us are these ancient 
methods that the Spiritualists are dragging once 
more into the light of day and advertising as if 
they were new things? It is not necessary that 
a table should rap in order that I may learn that 
Sister Teresa, the Little Flower, who died the 
other day, is actively engaged from that other 
sphere in assisting us, and I do not need auto- 
matic writing to assure me that my friends are 
in a spiritual sphere of progression and purga- 
tion and would be helped by my prayers. There 
is more evidence of that to be found in the 
stories of the Saints and of the Church than 
there is for the battle of Waterloo. 

This modern Spiritism, then, leaves me 
curiously cold for all that I am intensely in- 
terested in the subject with which it deals. To 
me, you see, it goes to work so strangely, and 
it almost makes one smile to be greeted by inch- 
high headlines in the Press which read very 
much as if they were such statements as these : 
Great Pronouncement by Famous Scientist: 
There is a SUN in the SKY! 
Do not fail to see the sensational article in this number: 
How I Discovered that DAY follows NIGHT ! ! 
Revolutionary Experiments by great Naturalist: 

CATERPILLARS Develop into BUTTERFLIES!!! 



TOUCHING OF THE WORLD INTANGIBLE 119 

One smiles, I say. I suppose one would smile 
anywhere, but especially on the Berg. 

It is the grandeur, maybe, and the solitude; 
or it may be the nearness of the sky; or it may 
be that one is thrust out here, as it were, to catch 
the whispers of that world about us; or it may 
be that mountain tops are, after all, the scenes 
of angel visits and of the manifestations of God. 
Anyhow the half of the world that is crazy on 
Spiritism cannot altogether laugh at Horeb and 
Sinai and Olivet any longer. At any rate, I 
have found the veil more thin than ever on the 
face of the Berg. 

I could write you stories if I liked, but I do 
not propose at length to do so. There is just 
one, however, that is in my mind (because I 
passed the place again to-day) which I would 
like to mention for a certain reason. It might 
easily be worked up into a tale for a magazine, 
but I shrink from that because somehow (for- 
give me if this is very silly) it would seem to 
me to trade on the poor souls whose secret has 
been for a moment or two shown to me. The 
tale-telling would be like the exhibition of a 
cripple or, still more, as if one were to earn a 
guinea or two by working up the story of some 
simple tragic love that had been confided to 
one. 

But there is a place here, on the Berg, very 
lonely and remote, to which my boy and I came 
one dying evening in late autumn, having 



120 PILGRIM PAPERS 

travelled far, and made a hasty camp. We had 
pushed on to cover the ground on the homeward 
trail, and there was hardly light to do more 
than espy a fountain and gather some bushes 
and roots for fuel ere the dark fell. The kettle 
boiled, and, our food eaten, we rolled in blankets 
and tried to sleep. The boy went off easily, but 
I could not. I lay first on one side and then 
on the other; I stared at the stars; I resolutely 
turned my face to the opposite hillside — each 
in turn, but all no good. There was a faint moon 
and no wind. The night was very still. 

The first indication of anything unusual that 
I saw was a shadow between myself and the 
hillside. I regarded it intently, and saw that 
it was a man. He passed along in the faint 
moonlight and entered what I saw in the 
moment of his entering to be a hut. You might 
suppose that I should have been curious or 
frightened; but I was neither, only interested. 
And I grew more interested when I saw more 
huts, more figures, and even — I am not romanc- 
ing to you, dear, and I certainly was not dream- 
ing — dogs. I think it was at that that I began 
to puzzle if we had not, perchance, missed seeing 
the village when we encamped in the late even- 
ing, and I rolled over and sat up in the blankets 
to ask my boy. He was apparently asleep still, 
for he was not moving, but covered up entirely, 
as a native sleeps, and I leaned over to waken 
him. But just then I was arrested by a figure 



TOUCHING OF THE WORLD INTANGIBLE 121 

coming towards me from the opposite slope of 
the valley. It was that of a man, quite distinct 
to see, naked except for a loin-cloth, and carry- 
ing spears. He was staring straight in front 
of him and running hard. I knew that he was 
shouting as well, though I cannot tell you how 
I knew, for I am not sure that I heard with 
my ears. The sight of him held me. It was 
all over in a few seconds after that, for he was 
coming swiftly nearer, and I was right in his 
path, and a terror began to fall on me as I 
realised it. Then, when he was only a few yards 
away, the moon shone for a moment more 
clearly; I saw what I took to be a great gash 
in his shoulder and breast; I cried out some- 
thing and gripped my boy. And as I did so 
there was nothing, and when I turned and 
looked towards the village, there was nothing 
there, either. 

My boy awoke slowly, slowly enough to en- 
able me to get over any fear I had and to put 
him off with a question or two on other subjects. 
After a while, too, I slept, and did not wake till 
dawn, nor did I dream. But in the morning 
light I walked to that hillside and poked around, 
and then called the boy. "Yes, Father," he said 
after examination, ' ' there have been huts here, I 
should say, and they have been burned down 
— see this stone, and that — but a long time 
ago. . . ." 

When I read what Eupert Brook© says of the 



122 PILGRIM PAPERS 

empty, spiritless Rockies, I thought of that 
night, and I have thought of it again and again 
since. There have been other things, too, up 
here, but my point is that, whenever I think of 
such happenings, they seem to me to be of less 
significance than the consciousness of you that 
I had to-day. It is a small wonder that we 
sometimes, some of us, see the shadows of what 
has been, either the shadows cast by the mind of 
our sub-conscious self or the objective shadows 
of that real spiritual world thrown, for some 
reason and for some moments, on the screen of 
this but half-real, temporal world. Doubtless, 
if we did not blind ourselves, we should see 
much more. But the matter that seems to me 
great is that one can be conscious of listening 
just the other side of a curtain all but all the 
time; that one can ride for a day and feel that 
at any moment the visible might dissolve like 
those old magic lantern exhibitions of our child- 
hood and show another picture; and that spirit 
can cry out to spirit so certainly across what 
may seem gulfs to us now, but which shall 
surely prove to be no more than a little space 
across which two may lean and kiss. 

So, my dear, have I heard you persistently 
all day, above the song of the stream, above the 
colours of the flowers, even above the depth of 
the sky and the shining of the sun. Your call- 
ing made me restless at first, for I wanted more 
of you than that, far more than I can say. And 



TOUCHING OF THE WORLD INTANGIBLE 123 

I told you so, and lifted my face to yon, and 
sent my message out; and I have peace to-night. 
Perhaps you were asking definitely just for that, 
and perhaps now you too are more content to 
wait. 



14. OP THE TRUE RICHES 

THERE are certain verses in the Bible 
which contain only half-truths, if, indeed, 
they are truths at all, shocking as I sup- 
pose it is to say so. Of all such verses that 
I dislike one of the worst is, I think, a text 
which finds a prominent place in what remains 
of the religion of Englishmen, for most English 
people are still at least buried by the Church. 
' ' We brought nothing into this world, and it is 
certain we can carry nothing out" — there you 
have it. It is just not true. For myself, I hate 
the saying. 

You wonder why, perhaps, I should think of 
writing to you while up here on such a gloomy 
subject, but, as in the case of so many other 
things, this wonderful old Berg has so much to 
say about it. The Berg has been preaching to 
me all day long on the foolishness of the text, 
and I rather like the sermon. So I want to pass 
it on to you. 

The Berg said, first of all, that of course 
there was an elementary and superficial truth 
about the words, and that no teacher could show 
me that better than itself. We were passing 
some tumbled piles of stone at the time, and they 
were immediately offered me as a proof. For 

124 



OF THE TRUE RICHES 125 

several generations men and women had lived 
there, lived busy, crowded lives in their own 
way of love and hate and passion; had built 
their houses of the grass and stone around; had 
ploughed up their lands; had wrestled with 
Nature and fought through snows and drought; 
and then had passed as mysteriously as they 
had come. Disease or War swept them off, or 
maybe they only trekked away — no one now 
can say. A few years, and you had to look 
closely to know that they had been there. The 
face of the Berg was again as it had been. They 
had brought nothing into this world, and they 
took nothing out. 

So I reasoned, like a silly fool, for it was not 
true even of them. Those little babies of a 
vanished past had brought with them the 
heritage of a racial curse older than history, 
each one bringing his share. Each had come 
heavily handicapped to the race, so that they 
had made no progress where others run fast and 
far. No good angel, moulding their souls from 
the treasures of God, had borne them into this 
world, but into each embryo being had been 
packed that which would inevitably dwarf their 
intelligences, sell them to passion, and brand 
them among men. Of Ham I know nothing, and 
care less; I doubt he ever lived; but it might 
well have been a sensualist such as he who sent 
these so far from empty-handed to live their 
day on the face of the Berg. 



126 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Then do yon suppose that even they went 
empty-handed out? I cannot. Their fifty years 
would have been enough to burden them still 
more with selfishness, ignorance, and the crav- 
ing for animal passions. And none of that cargo 
was jettisoned when, ship by ship, they sailed 
out from their brief anchorage into the un- 
known. What the Owner made of it all when 
their bills of lading were given in, I cannot even 
guess, but at least He could not have expected 
much else. I know enough of primitive man 
to know that. 

On the other hand, there are such as Viola. 
You remember what went to the making of 
Viola: 

"Spin, Queen Mary, a 
Brown tress for Viola! 

"Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes, 
Wood-browned pools of Paradise. 

"Lave, Prince Jesus, a 
Star in eyes of Viola! 

"Breathe, Regal Spirit, a 
Flashing soul for Viola! 

"Child-angels, from your wings 
Fall the roseal hoverings 



On the cheeks of Viola." 



There was a rich loading for you! Just so 
the greater part of our treasures of art, music, 



OF THE TRUE RICHES 127 

literature, and beauty was brought to us. But 
who loads this ship thus and that ship as those 
others, who can say? Or why? And the pathos 
of the contrast between Viola and any one of 
those vanished dusky babies ! 

But speculation of that sort is rather useless, 
and, after all, it need worry us very little. I 
have met men who seemed to find it an in- 
tolerable thing that any man should come into 
this world rich with treasure, or cursed, but I 
fail to see myself why they should feel so. God 
is great and just. If He is also inscrutable, 
what are we to complain? And maybe it is 
better to enter burdened hopelessly and succumb 
in the end, after a well-fought fight, than to 
enter rich and squander the treasure. "How 
hardly shall they that have riches enter the 
Kingdom of Heaven. ' ' Never, at any rate, was 
truer text than that, and you will remember 
that the servants were sent out into the high- 
ways and hedges to bring in, not the rich, but 
the blind and halt and maimed. And the Lord 
of the feast doubtless sees to it that they have 
healing salve for their wounds, and water in 
which to wash the stains of travel, and newer, 
cleaner, brighter robes than ever they wore here. 
I have found it in my heart to envy them. 

The other half of the question is enormously 
more interesting — the question of the treasures 
we can gather on our journey and bear away 
with us. The old Berg, needless to say, has no 



128 PILGRIM PAPERS 

hesitation as to their nature, and it seems so 
obvious here that one hardly likes to write it. 
For instance, last night I stood and watched 
the sun set over the great rift in the Berg that 
makes the valley of the Orange river, and — why, 
I hardly know — the beauty and peace of the 
world made the tears come to my eyes and the 
breath catch in my throat. It was so utterly 
lovely and still — oh, my dear, if only I could 
tell you ! And then I thought to myself : ' ' Sup- 
pose, now, you were standing on a gold mine 
— you might be-— would the gain of the gold 
mine be worth the treasure of that sunset !" 
And the old Berg silently answered me, not 
without the rather sarcastic smile of old age, 
and I knew, indeed, it would not. For the gold 
would never be mine, no, not though I found, 
mined, exploited, revelled in it; I should needs 
leave it all behind; but as for the gold of the 
sunset, it is mine for ever. 

They are fools who slave all their years for 
an existence ; utter fools who live among bricks 
and mortar all their days; fools, that is, unless 
they have learned the secret of this new 
Philosopher's Stone whereby even the dirt and 
dinginess of a city suburb can be minted into 
the eternal gold. For let us set it down, my 
dear: it is possible to grow very wealthy even 
in a slum, like some of the folk "Down our 
Street.'' It is possible, but it is very hard, and 
I refuse to believe we humans were ever meant 



OF THE TRUE RICHES 129 

to have to labour so for our gold. Why, here I 
pick it up in handfuls every day; I even, God 
forgive me, grow tired of picking it up; and 
sometimes, if I dare write it, I know I even seek 
to waste what I have acquired. And this eternal 
treasure, that we can carry away with us, is not 
easily lost. Easily won it is, but hardly lost. 
Oh, the good God! 

Yes, I do not doubt that Diogenes in his tub, 
Simon Stylites on his pillar, the filthy old 
anchorite who talked to Richard Raynal, and 
many more like them, can go rich away when 
their hour comes, and certainly many of them 
have. But it is a vocation. One must be called 
to it. The pity is that nine-tenths of the mod- 
ern folk, who have to live their lives out all but 
as much tied down, in fact, as any of these, have 
not been called to it. They have been pushed 
into it; that is all. They cannot get out, per- 
haps, but for the most part they do not wish to 
do so. And then they bring children into the 
world, not happily naked, but all wrapped up in 
their own old grave-clothes of mind, and their 
children bring children, and God help us all. 
Why should you and I have been delivered from 
all that, I wonder? The insoluble question 
again — let us leave it. 

The fact is that you and I are among the 
millionaires. A man is not held to be conceited 
if he proclaims that he can sign a cheque for a 
million dollars, so why should it be conceit for 



130 PILGRIM PAPERS 

you and me to say so of ourselves? I am, then, 
becoming a millionaire. I have learnt to laugh 
with joy at the antics of the world in a dozen 
blades of grass. I have seen suns die and flame 
again so often that honestly their glory is 
rarely long out of my eyes, and I know, at least, 
that it never will go for ever. I have heard the 
morning stars sing for joy and the whole wide 
earth take up the chorus so often that the re- 
frain is ever in my ears. I have felt the tingle 
of the cold, and the blaze of the sun, and the 
blows of the wind, and the sting of the rain so 
often that I know now that they are brethren 
and Death their dear sister. And I have seen 
God walk so often among the trees in the cool 
of the day, and have met His angels so often on 
their errands, that I know, wonderful though 
it is, that He is Friend, and that whichever of 
the angels He sends to me will be sent friendly- 
wise. Oh, I am rich, I am very rich, my dear. 
It is all quite true : there are fabulous riches on 
the Face of the Berg. 

And you — you are growing rich, are you notf 
You must be, for you have given so much away. 
Rich as I am, I all but envy you your riches. 
You will pass over with wealth so untold that 
surely the trumpets on the other side will blow 
as for the coming of a queen. I have watched 
you grow rich, and I have marvelled at your 
treasure. The sharpest thorns in all the Crown 
were offered you, and you took them with a 



OF THE TRUE RICHES 131 

smile, ana pressed them down so simply, but so 
truly, that the very Offerer must have won- 
dered to see you, and from each thorn has 
sprung an eternal rose of such beauty that no 
gold of earth can value them. The bitterest 
drink filled the chalice offered you, and you 
drank each drop so bravely that now no treas- 
ure of rubies can exceed yours. Pearls? You 
have wept them one by one into that safe 
hiding-place where no thieves break through 
nor steal, whither you shall go one day and find 
them. 

Poor old Job ! I hope he was only a mystery 
play after all. He said some wonderful things, 
and not for the world would I have missed 
them, but, my faith, he was a poor old man! 
Even at the end he counted his wealth in sheep, 
and oxen, and asses, and wives, and children, 
and houses, of which, indeed, he wrote truly 
enough when he said he could not take them 
away. Possibly he discovered, after all, that he 
was richer on the other side than he thought ; he 
ought to have been, considering the music God 
sang in his ears. But if he was not only a mys- 
tery play, and if he is really poor over there, 
why, then, when we come together with the in- 
finite riches we have gathered on earth and car- 
ried over with us, we will seek him out, and bid 
him share. 



15. OF, THE SHOUTING OF THE SONS 
OF GOD 

EVERY one writes of the sunsets, very few 
of the dawns, I suppose because even 
poets are not often up early enough to 
see them. Occasionally sleeping on deck in the 
Tropics, or rather trying to sleep, an early 
morning whiff of air wakes a tourist, and he 
sees; and still more rarely brave spirits climb 
Alps before the light, and write home about it. 
But we moderns see mostly the flaming sunsets, 
even in smoky cities, for the sun in his dying 
even glories in the smoke, and our tragedy em- 
purples half the sky. 

But on the Berg one may see the dawn very 
often, for one goes early to bed on trek for lack 
of anything better to do when the dark falls and 
supper is over, and one rises early to trek as far 
as possible before the heat. I wake nearly 
always in that mystical half -hour when it is still 
dark and yet one knows that the hours of dark 
are numbered, and I lie in my blankets and 
watch the sun rising more mornings than not. 
May I write of it, then, and the more so because 
commonly it is not in the least what one would 
expect or the sort of spectacle that is written 
about? 

132 j 



SHOUTING OF THE SONS OF GOD 133 

In the first place, you do not often see glories 
of crimson and gold, or even of silver and blue. 
The sun does not peep over the tops of the 
mountains, or rise suddenly from the edge of 
the dark world like a disc of fire. You cannot 
watch dark change to light in ten minutes, or 
the colours flame up, as at sunset they flame 
out even in England, while you wait. True, in a 
sense, all the colours are there, and there is a 
gilding of mountain-tops, but it is not spec- 
tacular as we have learnt to reckon spectacles, 
or not often, at any rate. 

No, it is infinitely more mysterious, more 
symbolical, more mystical. There is next to 
nothing to describe, and yet there is so much to 
think about. And there is time to think, for the 
dawn takes a long time. 

Yes, that is the first wonderful thing about 
it: it takes a very long time. At evening you 
can say: "Oh, the sun is setting; come and 
see," and you can stand and see and go away 
all in a little while. But on the Berg, at any 
rate, it is rare that it would be possible to call 
a person to see the dawn, and possibly it would 
be rare to find a person with sufficient patience 
to wait for it. For the sunrise is majestic in its 
unperturbed leisure, in its slow solemnity. 

You wake, and you know that the world is all 
aquiver for a new birth. It is incredible, that 
sense that every animate and inanimate thing is 
coming slowly to an ecstasy which, you feel, is 



134 PILGRIM PAPERS 

only half understood. The world is poised on 
tiptoe to welcome a Divine, incomprehensible 
mystery. It feels that it is about to bathe in the 
eternal fire of immortality, hut it does not know 
— it never knows, and never will know — just 
what that means. So there is an awed hush, 
and, like Elijah in the mouth of the cave, you 
catch the murmur of a still small voice that is 
no more than the breath of silence. I cannot 
really write to you of it. Again and again, at 
some midday, I have smiled to myself at the 
remembrance and known that it could not have 
been, but again and again, before the dawn, I 
have wrapped my face in my blanket to wait 
while God went by. 

It is the birds who are brave enough to break 
that silence. We have no great songsters on the 
Berg — indeed, by day you would say that we 
had none, for there is hardly a bird-voice except 
that of the big crows that adjure the disturbers 
of their solitude from some rock by the way, or 
the doves in the river willows. But in the dawn- 
ing you hear them. The little birds that run 
among the stones rather than fly and the 
smaller birds still that sweep in clouds over the 
lands all begin to twitter expectantly. And 
there are a thousand other sounds, I know not 
of what. The air is atremble with sound. You 
turn the ear to catch it, and cannot tell if you 
heard it or if you did not. It is as if solemn 
personages cried to each other across vast 



SHOUTING OF THE SONS OF GOD 135 

spaces in voices too great for us to hear, just 
as the tiny insects beneath our feet seem not to 
hear us. And the wind rises, too, and bears on 
its breast the murmur of water from a hundred 
tiny streams, while the whisper of its message 
stirs the very soul of the world and moves it to 
a prayer. 

Then the light begins. You do not know that 
it has begun until you perceive suddenly that 
the night is no longer night. It is utterly im- 
perceptible, that gradual lightening. At first it 
is the darkness that grows less heavy while not 
ceasing to be dark, and then it is the world all 
about that takes shape rather than the dark 
that goes. Far more slowly than the turn of the 
tide the day rolls in, but, as the tide, it laps the 
crags and kopjes and widens slowly, slowly, from 
a wash of something that is only just not light 
into light itself. More than an hour will go by 
up there in some fold of the Berg, and still you 
will not see the sun. You rise finally to look for 
him, impatient and eager for the warmth of his 
kiss, and at long last, why, there is the golden 
radiance crowning the mountain-top, and there 
is the wide shaft of fire stabbing the valley ! 

The very slowness of it all gives one the 
impression of irresistible power, and it is that 
sense that keeps me wrapped closely in my 
blankets many and many a time when I ought to 
be up. The dawn is alive ; it is, as it were, the 
aura of a living person, the immanation of 



136 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Power. The night does battle with it ; the very 
Berg towers up to resist it; the great valleys 
clutch themselves and their treasure of dark- 
ness; but all in vain. The dawn suffers in- 
numerable checks of rock and spur that stay its 
coming. It moves so slowly that the hearts of 
the watchers tremble lest it should not ctfme, 
but it moves so surely that one knows there is 
nought to do but to abide its coming. If a man 
is in tune for it, that slow coming breathes a 
wonderful and tender confidence and peace, but 
if he is not, it can make him fear. 

I wonder often if the Lord Christ will come 
again like that. I do not see why He should 
not. His first coming was so entirely unex- 
pected, and even although it seems now to us to 
have been very plainly written of and clear, still 
no one expected the Mother and the Babe at the 
Manger. So then of His second coming we 
may not understand the texts. Maybe His 
radiance is already painted on the clouds on 
which He sits, and that is why men do to-day 
as a whole place Honour and Liberty and Jus- 
tice higher than before. I wish I could see 
Truth set high, however, for it seems to me that 
that is a star of the morning for which we care 
less and less, in whose very existence we hardly 
believe. But I do not know; at any rate, He 
may come so. The trembling hearts may yet 
find that He has been coming all the time and is 
here ; they may find that it is not so much that 



SHOUTING OF THE SONS OF GOD 137 

He has come as that the night has gone. And 
in the moment of discovery, as they rise and 
say: "Why, it is day," the snn himself will 
appear above the far horizon, and we shall see 
the King in His Beauty. 

And perhaps Christ comes to individual souls 
rather like this. Men are not often convinced 
by an argument, by a book, by a preacher, by 
any one thing. Often, during the process of 
conviction, a man is not conscious that he is 
being convinced at all, and especially is this so 
with religious truth, the process of which is 
above us, beyond us, outside us, like a dawn. 
The change steals silently and imperceptibly 
over the wide horizons as well as over the valley 
at our feet. Suddenly we see this or that more 
clearly, why we scarcely can say; and as likely 
as not the thing seen to be clearer seems to have 
no connection with the sunrise of the main truth 
at all. And then in a moment we perceive that 
the night has gone; we see that the sun 
illumines every tree and rock and valley; we 
know that nothing is without a purpose and a 
meaning, that all things are part of a great 
whole, and that the sun of truth has risen upon 
us. Nor can we give much of an explanation. 
We really scarcely know ourselves how it came 
to pass, only that once we were blind and now 
we see. 

But for all this, the dawn is very cruel. It is 
inexorable fate. It comes, it floods the world 



138 PILGRIM PAPERS 

with hope, it rouses us eager and expectant, 
and in a little the intolerable heat overlaps the 
world; we trek on, hot and parched, we fail to 
attain, and we cast ourselves gladly down as the 
spent day dies. The kindly night deepens and 
veils and smothers, but far too soon the world 
trembles once more at the approach of its 
tyrant and lord. He has been but playing with 
us. He will call us up and thrust us out again 
with a smile, but it is a cruel smile. He knows 
well enough that we cannot do all we would, 
that we shall not attain what we wish, that our 
strength will fail, and that he is too great for 
us. 

And that is so like life. At twenty one is so 
sure that it is good, and one glories in one's 
strength ; at thirty one is walking in a pitiless, 
hard light; at forty one sees that the day is 
already on the wane; at fifty one wonders if 
there will be rest and plenty in the evening ; and 

at sixty ? Ah, I do not know. Maybe there 

are brave hearts who think confidently of an- 
other dawn as they know their day is done, but 
there are more to whom the falling veil of dark- 
ness can alone give peace. 

But I will tell you of my hope. The dawn 
does not fulfil the promise of the stars ; it con- 
ceals them. The glare of the risen sun of our 
poor planet floods us in a garish light, and 
wearies with its heat, but the soft-lit stars are 
still there, if hidden, remote, undying, very 



SHOUTING OF THE SONS OF GOD 139 

patient. Waking in the dawn, one sees them, 
and if they are lost in the day, they shine again 
more brightly with the night. So maybe the 
stars of our ideals still glitter about the throne 
of God and in the halo of His Mother. Maybe 
our last night will pass with the dawning of 
those other suns. Maybe the whole wide world 
expects that day, is groaning and travailing for 
it, and hopes anew that it has come at last with 
every dawn. Maybe in the dawning it is but the 
expectancy of a song that has not yet been sung 
that one catches, and from the longing of their 
ardent hearts may learn what it will be when 
the Sons of God shout for joy. 



16. OF THE BITTEE CROSS 

THIS began by being an altogether delight- 
ful day. Arriving fairly late last night at 
an out-of-the-way village right up one of 
those swift little streams that flow inland from 
the Berg to join up eventually with the Orange 
river, we found a white man and a missionary 
already there. This is rare enough, as you can 
imagine, and a very pleasant surprise, but it 
was still more pleasant when the missionary 
turned out to be my friend Fr. Lemans. I 
found him sitting on the floor of a hut, his back 
against the wall, eating with a native spoon 
from a basin of mafi (or thick milk) with mealie 
bread crumbled upon it. He was as surprised 
to see me as I was to see him, for it is rare that 
we actually hit on each other in our zigzag 
trekking, though we frequently cross each 
other's trails. He got up, a shortish, stoutish 
man, his face all smiles, and then we sat down 
together, and I helped him with his mafi. Cyril 
brought my packs into the same hut, and later 
on you might have seen us, each stretched out 
on his blankets, on either side of a candle stuck 
in an old tin, and each smoking many pipes of 
peace. 

He had been long on trek, and he has been far 

140 



OF THE BITTER CROSS 141 

longer in such work than I. Indeed, I was a 
boy at school when he first came out to the Berg, 
and he has been steadily roaming up and down 
these mountains with one object while I have 
been painfully sorting out my ideas in half a 
dozen countries. Never did Frenchman love 
home and kindred more than he, and if you will 
listen, he will ramble on for hours about the 
diocese in which he was born, its lovely 
churches, its kindly bishop, and its devoted 
faithful. Yet he has turned his back on all that 
for ever. For Christ's sake and the Gospel's he 
has neither wife, children, lands, nor home ; and 
if there be a wistful longing sometimes, just 
tinging a phrase or underlying a sentence, still, 
for all that, Fr. Lemans is very content, I think. 
He and his are a strange commentary on life, 
my dear. You and I want so much, do we not? 
and we are so torn by this and that, by love and 
passion, by hopes and fears ; but he seems to me 
to have almost no hopes and no fears; if love, 
certainly no passion ; if inevitable worries, cer- 
tainly no distress. He has his work, and he 
does it ; and he does not argue about his Faith 
or doubt it ; as to the future, well, another will 
carry on when he lays down his tools; the 
Church changes not, and the future is with God. 
So he travels all but unceasingly from tiny 
hamlet to tiny hamlet, living among the natives, 
not seeing a white man for weeks, and rich 
enough on twenty pounds a year and the grant 



142 PILGRIM PAPERS 

of a new suit when his old one is in rags. When 
he came his Catholics were less than a couple of 
score in all these mountains ; now he has about 
six hundred communicants, a regular route, a 
line of small churches, and a steadily growing 
army of hearers and catechumens. His disci- 
pline, length of instruction, and standard of 
knowledge for baptism are surprising, and I 
like it especially that he has three days' spirit- 
ual retreat for natives before he baptises them. 
I wish we could do something like that, but, 
sticking as we do to the traditional times of 
Baptism at Easter and Christmas, this is more 
than our one-man parishes can manage at such 
busy times. Fr. Lemans never seems cast down, 
and never, on the other hand, particularly joy- 
ful. Doubtless he has his moments, but on the 
whole this is typical of his life, one-centred, 
devoted, but in a sense indifferent. He appears 
to me to keep his eyes on God and to do his 
duty, and it is no matter to him how Almighty 
God may arrange affairs about him. In sun or 
storm, in success or failure, God knows best. 
Lemans knows he is a lonely pawn on the board, 
and he is contented so. 

One result of all this is that it is none too easy 
to get him to talk much about his work. He 
would never write a book about it, and I sup- 
pose he would never allow himself to write to 
any one as I am writing to you. That is the 
queer thing about people like Lemans. Sup- 



OF THE, BITTER CROSS 143 

posing he met yon, he could hardly possibly do 
other than love you, could he? And although, 
of course, you are you to me, I should have 
thought he might have met some one somewhere 
who would flutter his dove-cot for him. If he 
did, what would he do ? He would be in this, as 
in other things, so much greater than I, I sup- 
pose, that this too would be crushed out of 
sight, or, shall we say, poured out as a sacrifice 
to Almighty God? If so, would he be wise, or 
would he be foolish? — that is the question. 

Most of us are tempted to say, foolish, and I 
tell you honestly I am not sure that he is not, 
only I object strongly to conventional hum- 
drum, stodgy people, who acquiesce in bour- 
geois social and moral rules, calling him foolish. 
The kind of Englishman who would call Fr. 
Lemans foolish is the man who mistakes a fit of 
passion for love, and finds out his mistake, but 
settles down to ordinary middle-class married 
life, with the assistance of regular heavy meals, 
and a business. To my mind that man is a 
thousand times more of a fool. Lemans makes 
a sacrifice for the sake of an ideal; the other 
fellow lives without ideals for the sake of con- 
ventions. He is neither a decent Christian nor 
an honest pagan. I think, if I hate any one, I 
hate him. 

But there is something in the creed of the 
honest pagan. The sunshine is so good, flowers 
are so gay, the grass is so green, the world so 



144 PILGRIM PAPERS 

wide, human nature so lovable, and God so 
remote. When I think of these things, I wonder 
often if the creed of the Cross is not a mistake. 
I remember how the little waves laugh in the 
sun on the white sands of green coral islands set 
in the blue sea; I remember how the moon 
comes up over the desert, transforms the 
hovels, illuminates the minarets, and glistens on 
the great fronds of the palms ; I remember how 
the wild flowers gleam in the grass under the 
tall beeches of the forests of the Ardennes ; yes, 
and I remember the tinkle of laughter and the 
chink of glasses on the marble-topped tables of 
the boulevards, while the taxi-lights twinkle 
down the wide streets, and Paris is Paris. Just 
to live for all these and, much more, with you, 
would it not be good? Would it not even be 
right 1 Where and who is God that the shadow 
of Him should darken our paths 1 After all, did 
He not make these things, and did He not mean 
us to dance our little May-fly lives in the good 
sun of His creation? At least, He never meant 
us to live in a suburban villa with half a dozen 
yards of smoky shrubs in front and the next- 
door neighbour 's gramophone sounding through 
the thin wall, and with our lives bounded by 
office or shop. He could not have meant us to 
pass the golden days mere moving cogs in the 
great heedless machine which the greed of 
modern man has made, and in which so many 
dwarfed souls acquiesce. 



OF THE BITTER CROSS 145 

But the biggest proof that Fr. Lemans is 
right is set forth in those books which picture 
the wonderful tenderness and good humour and 
love that can exist in such surroundings. Per- 
haps you do not see the connection, but I believe 
it is there. Books like Mr. Riley 's, that picture 
the unselfishness that can exist in a Bradford 
slum, are the finest testimonies on earth to the 
reality of the soul, and if the soul is real, then 
God is real, and self-sacrifice is real, and ideals 
are real. Then it is better to have an ideal and 
endure for it than to have no ideal and laugh in 
the sun. It is better that one 's soul should grow 
through pain and discipline than that it should 
be lulled to sleep with the song of birds and the 
magic soundlessness of the moon and stars. 

The amazing thing is that such ideals can 
become so much more dominant than the world 
in which we live. Even I know that. I can 
travel among these mountains and see no 
beauty in the rocks and krantzes, no laughter in 
the flick of the little lizards that dart across the 
way, no peace in the widening valleys, and no 
joy in the wind. Or I can travel when the driv- 
ing rain makes me laugh, and to be forced to 
camp on some barren summit when there is 
next to nothing for the fire and still less for the 
pot is just a joke. I can hardly bear the sight 
of Cyril and his people sometimes, and at 
others I can smile at their stupidity and feel 
myself moved to heartfelt tenderness by their 



146 PILGRIM PAPERS 

sin. Why, do you say? Why because if there 
be light in the soul, the whole wide world is 
good ; and if there be darkness, there is no sun 
in a tropic sky. And we are all like that. You 
are, I know. 

But, oh, what pitiful playthings of the great 
Powers we all are, too ! Even our ideals deceive 
us, and what is to be done when ideals clash? 
Suppose there is a girl somewhere whose ideal 
is Fr. Lemans and his love, while his ideal is 
that grim blackened cross ! Can religion dictate 
to her that her ideal must be the cross likewise? 
Has it that dread right, I wonder ? I lay oppo- 
site the good priest and imaged it — a little home 
in France under a laughing Provengal sky and 
a hard-faced middle-aged peasant woman from 
whom vanished a score of years ago the hope 
and light of life. I daresay she is regular at 
mass, and I can see her set face over her beads. 
She works from sunrise to sunset; and before 
the kitchen fire in the evenings, when the big 
pot simmers and the peaceful cat basks in the 
warmth, she sees grim pictures of what might 
have been, and what must be, in the flames. 
There are very many such for one cause and 
another, are there not? Patriotism, Love, Re- 
ligion — what monsters they are ! Men dare and 
die for them, and their names are written on the 
scrolls of History, but what of the pitiful vic- 
tims they have crushed beneath their feet? 

I believe there are fools who quibble at the 



OF THE BITTER CROSS 147 

Garden of Eden story, but what fools they are ! 
If ever a world lay under a curse, it is this. 
Probably Lemans is right, and we deserve it 
and must accept it. Probably he is right also 
when he thinks that the good God is far more 
sorry than we, that His Heart is very pitiful, 
and that He is preparing a better place for us. 
It cost Him the Cross to do it, and it will cost 
us the cross to reach it. That is the Catholic 
Religion. And, like the Berg, there are days 
when it is very lovely and days when it is very 
cruel. 



17. OF TERESA 

YESTEKDAY I wrote you a letter that 
ended rather sadly, but I began by saying 
that I had expected a delightful day. It 
had been delightful, although I did not feel like 
it when I came to take up my pen to write to 
you. But I mean to tell you now what made it 
so delightful apart from the fact that I had met 
dear old Pr. Lemans. For in the morning we 
set out together, and his tongue was unusually 
loose, or rather it became loosened as we rode, 
and he told me one or two delightful stories 
that it does one good to hear. 

He began as we passed a village high up on 
the hillside. We were riding low down in the 
valley, and he had visited the place the day 
before. He pointed it out to me and said: 
"That's one of my places — about a hundred 
souls altogether, and practically every one a 
Christian. ' ' 

"Oh," said I, "it's rather remarkable to find 
a village wholly Christian. I suppose they were 
your people down below and trekked up here?" 

"No," he replied, "it's altogether a different 
story. Care to hear it?" 

Of course I said I should, and he told me what 
follows : 

148 



OF TERESA 149 

Fifteen years or so ago there was only one 
Catholic in that place, an old widow, who lived 
much alone, and whom Fr. Lemans used to come 
and visit two or three times a year when he was 
in these parts. For seven years he came, and 
each time he was well received, preached to the 
heathen, and gave the Sacraments to this 
woman; but there was never a convert. As 
always, it was not that the people had any other 
definite faith or that they disbelieved what he 
told them, but only that they preferred polyg- 
amy and the rest of it, and apparently the Holy 
Spirit was not moving in their hearts. 

One evening, then, towards the end of that 
time, he was sitting in his hut in the village 
after supper and saying his office, having come 
for one of his visits. There came a knock at the 
door, and he put his finger in the book to mark 
the place and said : ' ' Come in. ' ' 

The old widow entered. She sat down, and 
for a while she had nothing but commonplaces 
to say. He began to wonder why she had come, 
as he had already talked with her and heard her 
confession, when she said suddenly (to put it 
into vernacular English) : "Look here, Father, 
this can't go on!" 

"What can't go on?" he demanded in aston- 
ishment. 

"Why," she explained, "here have you been 
coming to this village two or three times a year 
for seven years. Each time you preach to the 



150 PILGRIM PAPERS 

heathen, and they listen, and when you have 
gone they say how true your words are and that 
doubtless they ought to become Christians. But 
they do not. Once I thought the wife of 
Mojakasane (for so I will call the headman) 
would become a hearer, but she caught a fever 
in the winter instead, and died. And now I 
grow old ; it cannot be that I have many more 
years to live. When I die, you will not come so 
much, if at all, to this place, and it is plain to 
me that we must do something. ' ' 

She stopped, out of breath. It was a long 
speech for her. Pr. Lemans wondered what 
was coming but he tried not to show it. Instead 
he said: "Well, but what can we do? I do not 
know what else to say, and you pray for them 
regularly, do you not?" 

"Yes," she said, "but, Father, the Holy 
Saints did more. I am no saint, but a sinful old 
woman, yet is my life my own, and I have plenty 
of time. Now, if it seems good to the priest, let 
me offer myself to God for these people. I am 
too old and too ignorant to become a nun, but 
could I not live up here in some such way as 
the good sisters live down below? And maybe 
God would see, if I gave myself altogether to 
Him, and would have mercy on these, my 
people. ' ' 

"What would you propose?" asked Fr. 
Lemans curiously. 

The old woman hesitated. "It is little I can 



OF TERESA 151 

do, oh, Father/' she said apologetically. "But 
did not Our Lord tell us in the Holy Gospel to 
fast and pray? If now I prayed at night, and 
before the sun is up, and at sunrise, and at 
midday, and when the sun is near setting, and 
at sunset, and before I sleep, and if I did not 
eat until sunset three times a week, and then 
but shilly-shilly, maybe Our Lord would have 
respect to my petition." 

"But you cannot read," objected the priest. 
"So what would you pray? And what would 
you eat on the other three days 1 ' ' 

"Let not the priest think me foolish," depre- 
cated the old woman. "It is only I, old Teresa, 
that speak. It is true I cannot pray the prayers 
of the sisters, but I can say the rosary; and I 
am old and thin : on the other days I need not 
eat." 

I suspect that Fr. Lemans was startled out of 
his habitual calm, but he did not show it. "You 
could not do so much," he said almost roughly. 
"You would fail and break your rule. It is 
better to try less and to succeed." 

Tears came to old Teresa's eyes. "No, my 
father," she pleaded. "Let me but try. And 
do you ask the good sisters to pray for me down 
below that I may not fail." 

He told me that he consented, and that when 
she had gone happily away he went out and 
stood under the stars. And a fragment from 



152 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the Holy Gospel came to his mind : " I have not 
found so great faith, no, not in Israel." 

So next morning at mass Teresa made her 
vow, and knelt on as in a trance while he packed 
up his goods. Nor did she speak as he left. 

It was towards the end of the season, and he 
went straight back the four days' journey to 
Eoma. A few weeks later the snows fell, and a 
hard winter set in. Well, to conclude it, he was 
at the midday meal one day, when he was told 
a native wanted to speak with him. He went 
out and found a herd-hoy whom he did not 
recognise. "Lumela, my son," he said, " whence 
come you?" 

"■I come from Mojakasane's, oh, Father," 
said the boy, "and I bring the words of Teresa 
the old. She sayeth: 'If the father will, let him 
come speedily, for I die.' " 

"Is she very ill!" demanded Fr. Lemans, 
looking at the snow and thinking that it was 
four days' trek even in summer. 

"She has not left her house these many 
weeks," said the boy, "and I heard my mother 
say that she could not live." 

So Fr. Lemans went back to the house and 
saw the Bishop, and he gathered his things and 
his pack, and that same afternoon he set out. 
He did not say anything to me of the journey, 
but I could fill in the gap. I know a little what the 
mountains are like when the wind blows over 



OF TERESA 153 

the snow and the days are short. But on the 
sixth day he arrived at the village. 

They were looking out for him. Mojakasane 
greeted him. 

"Did the priest come by the lower road 
across the drift yesterday ?" he asked. 

"Yes," said Fr. Lemans. "Why do you 
ask?" 

"Then Teresa had a true dream and saw 
him yesterday," said the man. "She saw him 
when his horse stumbled by the bank on the 
ice, and she cried out lest the father should slip 
off." 

Fr. Lemans stared at him, for it was so. 
"Lead me to her," he said shortly. "You talk 
much, Mojakasane." 

She lay on her blankets, very thin and very 
feeble, and he saw that she was indeed dying. 
He crossed over to her, and kneeled by her side. 
"Praise to Our Lady!" she said weakly. "I 
knew the priest would be in time." 

He gave her the Sacraments then and there, 
and she seemed stronger after them. When all 
was over, she held his hand and said sadly: 
"Oh, my father, thou wert right, and I was 
wrong. I should not have expected that God 
would listen to the prayers of such as I. Now 
I die, for He does not wish me so to live." 

Fr. Lemans was much moved. "Teresa," he 
said, "you must not speak so. Who can tell the 
Mind of God? His ways are past finding out. 



154 PILGRIM PAPERS 

"What you have done you have done lawfully 
and in faith; let us leave it with Him." 

At that she was a little comforted, and at last 
slept, but just before she fell asleep she said to 
him after a long silence : " If but one had been 
converted, I should know that God had had 
respect unto my prayers." 

"Teresa," he said again, "you cannot know 
the Will of Almighty God." 

After a little he left her, for he too was very 
tired, and he did not wake until in the dawn a 
woman came to him. "Teresa is dead," she 
said. "We thought she slept, but we find that 
she is dead." 

He stayed for the funeral, and watched 
rather sadly while they threw in the hard earth. 
Even then, he told me, he did not expect what 
would be. But as he left the place Mojakasane 
came up to him. 

"Father," he said, "I would become a 
hearer ..." 

"That was seven years ago," Fr. Lemans 
added. There was a church there now, and all 
had become Catholics these several years. Her 
grave lay just beyond the east wall of the 
church; "but," said he, "I think her place is 
with the holy saints. ' 7 

We did not speak for several miles after that. 
Then I asked if he had seen such faith and 
devotion in many of his flocfc "No," he said, 
"in very few. There was one case of a young 



OF TERESA 155 

man — you might like to hear that — but for the 
most part they do not seem to have it in them, 
not yet, at any rate, ' ' he added tranquilly. i ' It 
is no use looking for flowers before a great deal 
has been done, and even after the ploughing and 
sowing it is first the blade and then the ear. 
At present we are not much beyond the young 
plant stage, and it is a difficult country. The 
seedlings have many enemies; but we can 
wait." 

I nodded. It is so. But it is rather beautiful 
that there should be even one such story pos- 
sible up here on the hard, rough Berg. It is not 
a story that would count for much among the 
people who deal in gold and diamonds and sway 
the destinies of this country, nor, for that mat- 
ter, would I care to tell it to most of the people 
I might meet in your drawing-room, my dear. 
But I am glad to have been able to tell it to you. 
I think, deep down in your heart, you will 
rather treasure it, though you hear so much of 
the other side of missions, and I suspect you of 
laughing a little even at me at times! She 
would have been the roughest of diamonds, you 
know. I expect she wore the dozen or more of 
skirts beloved of Basuto women, ate her por- 
ridge with her fingers, and spat vigorously 
from time to time on the floor. Yet of such is 
the Kingdom of God, and, to be honest, I tell 
you the story that the work she did therein may 
not be limited to Mojakasane's village. 



la OFWILFEID 

I SHALL first tell you the thing as he told it 
to me, and you can make your own com- 
ments, if indeed you want to make any. 
You can guess how hard it is for a parson not 
to point a moral, but I have done that so many 
times in these letters that now I shall refrain. 
It is Fr. Lemans who speaks — you remember 
Fr. Lemans I — and he is speaking to me as I lie 
stretched out on the grass outside old Mallont 's 
store watching the drying of my blankets in the 
hot sun, which is very necessary, seeing that 
Spider chose to attempt the swimming of a 
river with them on his back but yesterday. It 
is not done by respectable pack-horses fully 
loaded. But then, as you have doubtless often 
felt, none of us in my little outfit are over- 
respectable. I have forgiven Spider because he 
thus won for me a day's rest and this story, and 
I hope you will, too, before it is finished. So 
now: 

(Fr. Lemans.) Yes, I agree with you about 
native teachers. They must have supervision 
at this stage, and our present systems of educa- 
tion are not planned for the Bantu, worse luck ! 
But it isn't only education they want. For it's 

156 



OF WILFRID 157 

not too often one finds a Christian native with 
a real vocation to the ministry. I fear they 
think a great deal about the money and the 
position . . . Priests f Well, of course, we've 
no native priests on the Berg, not yet. Nuns, 
yes, but not priests. Of course they would have 
to be celibate and members of an order. They'd 
get their clothes and their food. They would 
have no lands, no wife, no children, no cattle. 
If priesthood with you meant that, how many of 
your natives would come forward, do you sup- 
pose? 

But IVe known one vocation — a rather strik- 
ing affair. I think once, talking about old 
Teresa, I just hinted at it to you. I'll tell you 
the story if you like. 

It was a few years ago now, and I was up here 
for a baptism. We had had our three days' 
retreat in the village, and after the Sacrament 
I was going to my hut, when a boy came up and 
said he wished to speak to me. I stopped. "All 
right, ' ' I said. ' ' What is it V ' 

"I cannot tell the father here," he said. "Let 
us go to his house." 

So we went to my house, and we both sat 
down. The boy plunged into it straight away. 
"I want to be a Catholic, Father," he said. 

I told him I was glad to hear it, that he must 
come to the classes regularly and start at once 
to say his prayers, and I wrote his name down. 
Just the usual thing, you see, and when I had 



158 PILGRIM PAPERS^ 

finished I expected him to go, but not a bit of 
it ; he sat on. 

' ' Well/' I said, "what next?" 

"I want to tell the father why I want to 
repent," he replied, "if the father will listen to 
me." 

I was rather tired, but I told him the father 
would listen, and he told me this tale. 

"A week ago, my father, I was asleep in my 
hut. I was a heathen, and I had not been much 
to church. Suddenly I awoke, and I saw that 
there was some one in the room. I could just 
see that there was some one, but no more. I 
was sleeping in a little hut alone, and the hut 
was nearly full of wheat bags and skins, so that 
I thought perhaps a man had come in to steal. 
Therefore I cried out loudly: 'Who is it?' 
There was no answer, and as I was about to speak 
again, still rolled up in my blankets — for I 
feared to get up — I noticed a wonderful thing. 
The figure was getting plainer, and there 
seemed to be a light about it. I was frightened, 
and although I tried to shout loudly, I could 
only whisper: 'Who is it? 9 once more. 

' ' Then, my father, while I watched, the figure 
grew very plain. It moved over to me, and it 
was a man, and there was a light in his breast. 
He came close to me and looked at me, and I 
looked into his eyes, and as I looked I knew that 
I must be his servant. He did not speak, but he 
lifted one hand and pointed to the light on his 



OF WILFRID 159 

breast, and I saw that beneath his coat there 
was the likeness of a heart on fire and red. And 
then, as I stared, he said to me three times very 
distinctly: * Wilfrid, thon hast not chosen Me, 
but I have chosen yon. ' Each time as he said it 
I saw him less clearly, and I heard less clearly, 
and at the last I conld hardly see his face or 
hear his words. And afterwards I saw him no 
more." 

The boy stopped. Now yon know these 
native visions and dreams as well as I do. I 
daresay, if it had happened to me when I first 
came out, I shonld have been much impressed, 
but now — well, I had been in the mountains many 
years, and I knew how often these people are 
converted by dreams. I thought to myself that 
the boy had seen such a picture many times; 
and as for the rest — ah, well, the good God 
knows! What shall we say? 

So I was not very surprised, impressed you 
would say. No, but I would not hurt the boy, 
so I said: "Yes, it is plain God has called you. 
You saw Our Lord of the Sacred Heart. Whom 
do you know by the name of Wilfrid 1 ' ' 

"The father speaks true," he said. "This 
very day, when he held up the new picture, I 
saw again the man of my dream. That is why I 
have come to the father now. As for the name 
* Wilfrid,' I do not know it at all, but it is plain 
it is to be my name when I am baptised." 

I heard him in silence. I thought to myself 



160 PILGRIM PAPERS 

that I would not question him closely on either 
point, first that he had not seen a picture of the 
Sacred Heart before, and second that he had 
not heard the name of Wilfrid. You know these 
people. They often lie ; whether they mean all 
their lies, who can say? Perhaps he truly 
thought he had not seen the picture; perhaps 
he only meant that he had not understood Who 
it was. It was a little thing, and besides the 
dream was only one among many that I had 
heard. So I asked no questions. I said: 
"Good-night," and perhaps a few words more, 
and the boy went. The thing passed, too, almost 
from my mind. 

But as time went on I began to notice Wil- 
frid, as I shall call him at once. I used to see 
him three or four times a year, and always he 
was at Eoma for Easter. He was very quiet, 
and he was very good. He learnt most quickly, 
so much that he knew all that he had to know 
for Baptism before he was even a catechumen. 
For all that, I would not hurry. I made him 
wait, and for two years I watched him more and 
more, until I was very interested when the time 
came for his Baptism. 

He came to Eoma for it, as he was most 
anxious to do, and I have never before or since 
seen any native so devout. He prayed always 
before the Sacrament, and when he made his 
confession I wondered for the light there was 
in his soul. After it he did not at once go; 



OF WILFRID 161 

instead lie said to me, but hesitatingly: 
"Father, there is something I would say to 
thee." 

"Say on, my son," I said. 

"Dost thou remember the vision of Our Lord 
which I told thee whereby I was called into the 
Church ?" he asked. 

"Yes," I said, "I do. It was a great mercy 
of the good God, and you should give Him great 
thanks. ' ' 

He nodded eagerly. " It is so, my father, ' ' he 
said. "But my thanks are little. What are my 
words, that I should be able to thank? More- 
over, Our Lord spoke to me, and I have yet to 
obey His words." 

"You are to be baptised to-morrow," I said. 
"Surely in that you will obey them." 

"In that I shall," he replied. "But — let my 
father forgive me— I do not think they will be 
finished then." 

"What do you mean?" I demanded, for I had 
had no such case before. 

"I would be a priest, Father," he said. 

Now at that I was astonished. As I have 
said, it was more than I would have expected. I 
knew that the boy knew well enough what it 
meant — our people of course do — and I was 
silent, thinking for a while. Then I spoke, and 
it was plain immediately that I had said the 
right thing. 



162 PILGRIM PAPERS 

"You are the one son of your father, and he 
is a heathen; is it not so, Wilfrid?" I asked. 

"Yes," he said. 

"What, then, will your father, the headman, 
say when he hears that his son will not raise up 
children to his name V 9 1 demanded. 

"I fear to tell him," said the boy simply. 

Well, of course, you know as I do what chil- 
dren mean to a native. I saw trouble looming 
ahead, and I also saw the greatest temptation 
for the lad. Thinking quickly, I thought to 
myself once more that while I ought not to dis- 
courage him, I had better not make too much of 
it. So I said : ' ' Look here, Wilfrid, to-morrow 
you will be washed from your sin. After that 
go home and see how you can live as a Chris- 
tian. Say no more to any one, and on the day 
you first receive the Blessed Sacrament we will 
speak of these things again." 

He came from the font next day with shining 
eyes, and he went off home with the rest. But 
this time I remembered and prayed for him. 

Months later he wrote me a letter. In it he 
said his father was urging him to marry, and 
had chosen the girl, but that he had begged for 
nothing to be done till after Easter, when he 
would be at Roma for his first communion. I 
read that letter several times. It did not say 
much, but somehow it said a great deal. Then, 
like the Jewish King, I went into the Sanctuary 
to spread it out before the Lord. 



OF WILFRID 163 

Easter came, and with it Wilfrid. We were 
very busy, we priests, of course, and I had no 
chance in Holy Week to speak with him. But 
it was I who gave him the Blessed Sacrament on 
Easter Day, and I just noticed that his eyes 
were fast closed as I placed the Host on his 
tongue. And that evening he came to speak to 
me. 

He came into my room and remained stand- 
ing before me. He was very quiet, but his eyes 
shone; they shone as I have never thought to 
see, but as I have read of eyes shining in the 
lives of the holy ones; indeed, they shone so 
that I did not speak. But he began at once. 

"This morning," he said, "He Whom I saw 
before came to me with the Blessed Sacrament 
Himself. He did not speak at all, but I looked 
into His eyes, and I saw there, my father, what 
I had seen before, and more. Oh, my father, 
I cannot marry: I must keep myself for Him, 
only for Him. And I have come to thee that 
thou mayest help me, my father. ' ' 

Now I was in a difficulty. I thought quickly. 
We had no place for him, and, moreover, I still 
wondered myself as to his vocation. If I was 
wrong, God forgive me. There had already 
been talk of his going to school, but his father 
would pay no fees, and he had no money. What 
could be done? Then I thought that possibly 
they would take him in Natal, only I could not 



164 PILGRIM PAPERS 

say at once, and, besides, it would mean seeing 
the Bishop and much correspondence. 

"Wilfrid," I said, "if Our Lord wants you 
to be a priest, He will help you. Go back home 
now, and I will see what I can do. Refuse to 
marry, and I will write to you as soon as I have 
anything to suggest. If you have a real voca- 
tion, never forget it, and keep yourself from all 
hindrances. ' ' 

"I will, my father/ y he said. "Besides, this 
morning I vowed myself to Our Lord." 

He spoke very quietly, and he did not again 
emphasise his immediate difficulties, so that I 
did not think more of them. I was doubtful 
over the wisdom of his vow, and I wondered 
what he had said, but I judged it best to say 
little. Perhaps I was foolish, God knows. Still ; 
all I said was "God keep you, Wilfrid, and Our 
Lady have you in her prayers. ' ' 

"I think so, Father," he said quaintly after 
the native manner, and we talked of a few in- 
different things. Then he went. 

About Christmas, if I remember rightly, a 
man came down from his village, and I asked 
after Wilfrid. "He is gone to the mines in the 
City of Gold," he said. 

I was genuinely astonished and sorry. I 
questioned him, but got no answer that threw 
any light on the affair. He did not know 
Wilfrid's address, and I could only pray that 
God would keep him in the midst of such great 



OF WILFRID 165 

peril to his vocation, if, indeed, he had one, 
which I now began again to doubt. And a year 
went by. 

One day I came back from a two months' 
trek, and after greetings one of the fathers said 
tome: u Oh, by the way, there is a boy dying in 
the hospital who much wants to see yon. He 
comes from the mountains somewhere.' ' 

"What is his name?" I asked, and they told 
me. It was, of course, Wilfrid, and he was 
dying of rapid consumption, caught in the 
mines. He had been brought in at his own re- 
quest to die in our hospital. 

I went at once to see him, and I hardly knew 
him, so shrunken and thin he was. But there 
was still the light in his eyes, for which I 
thanked God. We could talk only a little, and I 
promised to bring him the Blessed Sacrament 
next day, but he was very weak. I did not like 
to question him about his going to the mines. 
Nor did he say anything, and so we parted. 

But that very night I was sent for, about 
midnight, with a request to go to him with the 
Sacraments. I hurried to the church and then 
to the hospital, and I found him indeed plainly 
dying. But he was radiant. He knew the end 
was coming, and it seemed to me that he had 
something he was anxious to say the while I 
administered the last rites to him. And when 
they were over, it came out. "I had to go to 
the mines, Father,'^ he said, "or my father 



166 PILGRIM PAPERS 

would have forced me into the marriage. As it 
is he has already paid the cattle for the girl, 
and she is waiting at my place. He wrote to 
tell me of it while I was there, in the City of 
Gold, and then I did the only thing I could do : 
I threw myself on our Lord, and I begged that 
He would not forget that He had chosen me. 
And quickly this sickness came, oh my father, 
and now I go to Him. Oh, yes, grieve thou not, 
for — for He has chosen me." 

He was very weak, and he could say no more. 
I just held his hand, and I think I said that I 
understood. He lay with closed eyes till the 
dawn, while I watched and wondered if he 
would speak again. But he did not with his lips. 
Only, just as he died, his eyes opened wide 
again, and there was that in them more radiant 

still of which I cannot speak. 

# # # # # 

1 i They shall come from the east and the west 
and the north and the south, and sit down with 
Me in the Kingdom of My Father." 

" And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on 
Mount Sion, and with Him an hundred, forty 
and four thousand, having His Father's Name 
written on their foreheads. . . . These are they 
which are virgins, and which follow the Lamb 
whithersoever He goeth." 



19. OF SOME SICK VISITS 

THIS has been a morning of sick-visiting, 
and I am spending an afternoon of soak- 
ing rain writing to yon abont it. After 
mass and a scrap of breakfast we started, the 
catechist and I, I carrying the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. The school-children had lined np very 
simply and naturally outside, making a kind of 
avenue from the church door to my horse, held 
by Cyril, and as I came out, bearing our Lord, 
they all fell on their knees. Cyril held my 
bridle while I got on; then he too knelt on the 
stones. And without words the catechist 
wheeled his pony and rode off, and I followed. 
It was the sort of morning that you love, and 
I thought of you incessantly, despite What I 
carried, as we went. We had not to go down 
to the river, but up and round the mountain, in 
and out of clefts, over shoulders, up crests, mile 
after mile. We were soon high above the Mis- 
sion and up in a magical world of clouds. The 
storms, blanketed in white mist, would come 
sweeping down on us, hiding the river valley 
far below, till we wandered, at that height, 
seemingly on the roof of the world. It is still 
very early spring here, and, save that the grass 

167' 



168 PILGRIM PAPERS 

is green, the country looks dead— not a tree, not 
a flower, nothing of that verdant, luxurious 
vegetation which in the semi-tropical summer 
will clothe the course of the little mountain 
streams, nothing but the irregular scraps of 
ploughed land, dotted here and there on the 
hillside, without hedge or boundary stones, and 
the bleak mountain sides. It certainly was not 
pleasant going. First we were wet; then the 
wind would dry us ; then round the peaks would 
come the swishing mists again, and we would 
be once more wet ; then again we were dried and 
had a snatch of sunlight; and then, just as it 
was beginning to rain again, we made a dash 
for it and reached the huts. 

You would not think people would, or per- 
haps even could, live up here. In comparison 
with the plains below any of these Berg vil- 
lages, such as that near the church, seem grim, 
small, and poverty-stricken, but in comparison 
with that these that we had been passing on our 
three-hour ride were much smaller and poorer 
again. Yet it is surprising how many people 
there are here; in almost every mountain fold 
a hut or two, and here four huts make a village. 
It was such a village we had reached, and in the 
four huts live a dozen adults at least. They 
came flocking, with the children too. The tiny 
hut was ready for me, swept and partly emp- 
tied, with skins on the floor and a rough, home- 
made wooden stool waiting for transformation 



OF SOME SICK VISITS 169 

into an altar. The folk crowded in, " rough 
souls" and poor, but I mean it when I say wise 
souls and rich. Listen while I tell you. 

I had come to give Communion to a sick 
crippled woman of middle age who cannot walk 
at all. I draped the stool and placed my cross 
and candle, robed myself, and was ready. It 
comes almost as a shock to find how familiar 
they are with the prayers in so remote a place, 
these Christians of ours who have certainly 
learnt wonderfully these last few years, what 
time they have assumed Mary-medals and 
rosaries. But I shall not write of that, rather 
of a little incident at the close. 

The vestments were off at last, and I came to 
shake hands with the cripple. She, however, 
was fumbling with a dirty rag beneath her 
clothes, and at last produced a small bundle. 
Many knots had to be wrestled with, but finally 
a coin appeared, and was held out to me for 
' ' collection. ' ' I took it, wondering; it was a 
sovereign. "Do you want change V I asked, 
and doubtfully, for I had none. This, however, 
she did not even understand, and it had to be 
explained at great length, for she had never 
changed a coin in her life. When she under- 
stood, she emphatically refused, and, as I stood 
still doubtfully turning over the gold, I was told 
the story. 

It appears that I communicated her before, 
three years ago, before I went to the war in 



170 PILGRIM PAPERS 

East Africa, and that that had been her first 
communion. When I had left, she had been 
much troubled because she had had no money 
offering to make. She never had had a coin. 
A cripple, and of course unmarried, she had 
just existed in that tiny village, fed and clothed 
in rags by somewhat grudging relations, who 
had little use for such as she ; but, as I say, she 
had been much troubled over her lack of money 
for her offertory. Then, a year later, a brother 
came to see her on his way to his own village 
with the money of his year's wool and grain 
just sold at the store, and in a fit of generosity 
he had given her a pound. God knows what 
that sovereign must have represented to that 
woman ! Her friends could have bought her at 
the distant store, sugar, and coffee, and beads, 
and a new piece of coloured stuff for her head, 
and sugar again, all but unlimited sugar. I 
fancy her turning it over and over, questioning 
as to the store she had never seen (which, you 
know, is a wonderful palace of delights to these 
people) and as to the treasures potentially hers 
— and then remembering the collection. Of 
course it was a good chance that no priest would 
ever come her way again, as none, I suppose, 
now ever will, for I should think that she is 
dying. But she lapped the only money she ever 
had had in all her life in a dozen folds of rag, 
and hid it in her clothes against my possible 
return. And three years later it fell out that I 



OF SOME SICK VISITS 171 

came, and at her second communion she gave all 
her treasured fortune to her God. Oh, my dear, 
these poor rough souls! Perhaps I am an 
emotional fool, but I tell you I groped my way 
out of that hut blind for the moment with tears. 

We struck off transversely to make a second 
visit, and this again was to a woman, recently 
baptised in sickness by the catechist. She lives 
in one of two huts perched up like an eagle's 
nest, and she turned out to be the oldest native 
that I have ever seen. She was crouching over 
a tiny dying fire in a hut full of smoke, babies, 
dogs and chicken. There were many smells. 
I was given a seat on the floor, and promptly lit 
a cigarette. 

That started it, for she had never seen a 
cigarette before. It seemed to me amazing to 
find a creature so remote from the world, 
especially as she can hobble about a bit and has 
all her faculties. But soon it appeared that I 
was only the second white man she had seen, 
except for a distant view of a Government 
Police Inspector on border patrol. (The other 
had been the E.C. itinerant priest who had 
visited a relation in some huts lower down, not 
long after the Boer war.) So all this led to 
talk, and I tried to find out her age. 

Well, she had come there "long, long, long 
ago," when, as she said, there were practically 
no people in these mountains. She had fled 
with her son, since dead, when the ' ' slayers ' ' of 



172 PILGRIM PAPERS 

her husband had been sent by the chief to eat 
up all that was his. In these remote mountains 
she had shaken off the bloodhounds, oh, "long, 
long, long ago." She had been old when the 
magistrate and the store, later on, had come 
into these parts, too old to go with the rest and 
see. She remembered the great Moshesh, as 
far as I could make out before he had con- 
solidated his power. She must be easily a 
hundred years old, possibly a hundred and ten. 
It is staggering to think of the period that 
that old soul's life has covered. When Welling- 
ton fought Napoleon she was alive, I daresay. 
She was a woman before a white man crossed 
the Orange (unless it were some chance 
hunter), before the Voor-trekkers, before an 
ounce of gold had been found at Johannesburg, 
or a diamond at Kimberley. In those days there 
was neither steamship, nor train, nor bicycle, 
nor motor-car, nor aeroplane, nor breech-load- 
ing rifle, nor a tin of preserved food, nor a 
safety match, nor, I think, a safety pin, in the 
whole wide world, European soldiers still car- 
ried halberds into action (they did at Waterloo, 
you know) ; they still cut off limbs in cold blood 
and dipped the stump into boiling oil ; and that 
most terrible of all beasts of prey, the bacillus, 
was still unguessed and unsubdued. And I be- 
lieve I should be right in asserting that the only 
Church of England clergyman in what is now 
the Union of South Africa plus Rhodesia was a 



OF SOME SICK VISITS 173 

military chaplain at the Cape. Yet is even she 
now sought out in my unworthy person. 

I asked whose were the figures on the medal 
she wore about her neck. 

"Mary, the Mother of God," she said, "and 
Jesus.' ' 

"And Who is He?" I asked. 

"God," she said simply. 

At that I wondered much, more than you can 
think. Here had I found in one morning two 
souls richer far than some episcopal dignitaries 
of my Church. 

Then we knelt to pray. I must say she is a 
unique and astounding old soul, for at a hun- 
dred she had been able to learn the "Our 
Father," the "Hail Mary," and the "Glory be 
to God." It may not seem much to garner in 
a hundred years, perhaps, and it is, I suppose, 
a frail enough equipment for the great journey 
that lies so soon before those tottering, hard- 
ened feet, but I think — don't you? — that it will 
carry her through. 

I am quite willing to confess to you that the 
conditions of the after-world are utterly beyond 
my understanding. I accept Heaven and Hell, 
and a place of Purgation and Preparation, 
partly because the only authority that I can see 
in this world, or that I trust at all, teaches me 
so, and after ail there is a measure of reason in 
them. It seems plain and reasonable, too, that 
there will be progression and steps by which 



174 PILGRIM PAPERS 

one will mount to the Throne of God ; but other- 
wise I am a sheer agnostic. I preach and argue 
about spiritual things, it is true, and I can see, 
as it were, tags sticking out of the tangle which 
may perhaps straighten out into threads, but on 
the whole it is a conflicting and incomprehen- 
sible mystery. Often, among the people, I am 
entirely dazed by it, dumbfounded as to what 
men will make of Almighty God or Almighty 
God of men. Paris, London, the worshippers 
in St. Paul's, as well as the professional girls of 
our modern streets, only add to my bewilder- 
ment. In my library there are books and books 
on the subject, the intellectual wealth of the 
world's universities, but frankly they do not 
help me much. Doubtless all this is largely my 
own fault and my own stupidity, but you, my 
dear, have confessed to me that you are in much 
the same boat. Hence I want to suggest to you 
two new teachers, a crippled woman and a cen- 
tenarian, on the face of the Berg. They have 
learned so little, and they know so much. 



20. OF THE BISHOPS ' PRAYERS 

DO you know, I have never yet addressed 
a missionary meeting without having an 
uneasy feeling afterwards. I always 
feel as if I had created an entirely wrong im- 
pression, and I remember how distinctly I was 
aware of having had a wrong impression given 
me by many missionary meetings when I first 
came out to Africa. It is, of course, all but in- 
evitable. A speaker necessarily selects interest- 
ing episodes, days that were at least days of 
action and in some sort successes, with which to 
occupy half an hour's talk, more especially 
when the financial aid of his work depends 
largely on that half hour. He may be very far 
from wishing to create a false impression, in- 
deed, personally, I have nearly always tried to 
emphasise the fact that I had to omit an account 
of the routine, the monotony, the failures, in 
my speeches ; but, try as he will, that other im- 
pression is created. You see, there is the colour 
and the beauty and the victory; it would be 
wrong not to depict it; others, after all — 
traders and officials — speak enough of the other 
side in the ears of the world ; and perhaps it is 
impossible in half an hour to give a true 
vignette. I think that is it. I could not sketch 

175 



176 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the work on the Berg for you so that you might 
see it as I do looking back over the years, how- 
ever much I tried. 

But in these letters I begin to feel much as I 
used to do after a missionary meeting. Here 
have I been writing to you evening by evening 
almost the striking incidents of the twelve 
hours. Yet in each twelve there have been 
probably ten when I had no vision and no song, 
and for every day on which I could look back 
and say, "Well, I must write to her of this," 
there have probably been two when I rolled 
myself in my blankets, glad to sleep and forget. 
So, my dear, I begin to feel that you may be get- 
ting a wrong impression, and as to-day was one 
of the other kind of days (albeit even this with 
the leaven of humour), I intend to write it up 
faithfully for you. 

It began this way. I slept at a store, as I had 
a round to do yesterday which landed me there 
after midday, and it seemed useless to go on 
another hour to the church when early this 
morning I should have to come again from the 
Mission past the Store to reach yet another 
village in which there were our people. So I 
told the catechist to be very early, and turned 
in. I was up at six, dressed and in the saddle 
half an hour later, and there I sat. At a quarter 
to eight the catechist turned up. It was a 
dullish morning, and he quite cheerful, and, I 
fancy honestly unconscious of having wasted 



OF THE BISHOPS' PRAYERS 177 

my hours. At 9.30 we reached the village. By 
this time I was tired and hungry and likely to 
be more so before I could in any way satisfy the 
needs of the body. The hut was just a hut, and 
no particular preparations had been made. 
However, I set up an altar and arranged every- 
thing, for, however poor the place and however 
simple the furnishings, it seems to me that 
nothing should lack for the coming of the King. 
Then I sat to hear the half-dozen confessions, 
sat with despair and, I fear, anger in my heart. 
One woman at least knew what she was about ; 
the rest were quite hopeless. The last man re- 
peated the Creed instead of the Confiteor, nor 
would he be switched out of it, and knew ab- 
solutely nothing of what he was there to do. He 
and the rest came because the catechist told 
them to do so, all but the first woman that is. 
Afterwards I got hold of him and began to in- 
struct him, but then asked where he came from. 
He told me, and that he was going back in a 
few months. I gave it up then ; I know that in 
that part of the Anglican Church they do not 
teach the Sacrament of Penance. 

Well, then we began the mass. The hut was 
crowded, I of course at the altar, with the 
catechist to serve and lead the people's prayers. 
And the hopeless muddle he made of it ! I was 
so distracted that I hardly knew what I was 
doing, and I should have been happier alone. 
Yet the fellow has had a year's training at a 



178 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Catholic Training College, at my expense in- 
cidentally, which only shows that one year will 
not eradicate ten of ignorance and neglect. 

There were a lot of heathen, and I preached 
to them. Somehow or other I was very moved 
and tried with all my heart to win them. At the 
end one man came up and said he would like to 
speak to me privately. So I took him aside. A 
convert ? Oh no ; he wanted me to give him an 
old coat. 

And about twelve o'clock I had a crust of 
bread and a cup of so-called coffee, and after 
that honestly thanked God for the gift of 
tobacco. 

Of course most of this was not the natives' 
fault. If I had recited, for example, the Prayer 
Book Service of Holy Communion straight 
through in a loud voice, the catechist would 
probably have said most of the "Amens" at the 
right time, and the people would dutifully have 
repeated them after him. Also they would have 
been able to repeat the General Confession in 
the same way. That is what most of them are 
used to, and that is why most of them know 
nothing. My dear, I tell you my blood absolutely 
boils when I think of it. I fear I see red. Of 
course I have no right to do so ; in any case who 
and what am I so to criticise my elders and 
betters and the incomparable Prayer Book? It 
has often been rubbed into me that it is mad and 
uncharitable so to do. 



OF THE BISHOPS' PRAYERS 179 

But the point is that for some reason or 
another our authorities will not understand the 
mental limitations of these people. (Forgive 
me if I write dogmatically, won't you? It is 
only meant to be a forceful form of argument, 
you know.) They will not see that the language 
of the Book of Common Prayer, even in their 
own tongue, is utterly and entirely beyond 
them. Look here, it is I Image the folk in that 
hut to-day, five Christian women and one Chris- 
tian man and some heathen, none of whom could 
read, none of whom ever mix with people of 
ideas, to whom, in that remote village perched 
on a crag of the Berg, practically no news of the 
world ever comes, and whose very vocabulary 
is limited to a few score words concerned with 
babies, mealies, cows, and sheep. 

" Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, "Who 
of Thy tender mercy didst send Thine only 
begotten Son to suffer death upon the Cross for 
our redemption; Who made there, by His one 
oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, 
and sufficient Sacrifice, Oblation and Satisfac- 
tion for the sins of the whole world ; and didst 
institute and in His holy Gospel command us to 
continue a perpetual memory of that His 
Precious Death until His coming again . . ." — 
how much of that, beautiful as it is, do you 
think such people would understand? Why, I 
dare to say that they do not know the meaning 
of half the words even in Sesuto, and as to f ol- 



180 PILGRIM PAPERS 

lowing the complex grammatical construction — 
oh, but why go on? I suppose our English 
fathers in God cannot disillusion themselves of 
the idea that because it is Sesuto therefore 
Basuto will understand it, yet they would have 
known, if they had been in France, that when 
it was English not one Tommy in ten under- 
stood it. Yet the most ignorant Pommy is a 
University professor compared to these, my 
people. 

To stand up, then, and recite all this in an 
even and audible tone, while the catechist fol- 
lows with painful and painstaking energy in his 
book and blurts out "Amen" when it is indi- 
cated, is simply to waste one's time. Yes, I 
have written it, and it shall stand. Of course 
the good native folk reckon that it is 
"prayers," and that you are a white moruti and 
doubtless have power with God, and they will 
put on clean clothes and smile and shake hands 
and come miles for the same performance when 
you are about next time. But for all that it is 
waste time. They learn nothing, and only by a 
miracle can grace filter through to their souls. 
I do not say that Almighty God will not and 
does not work such a miracle, but I do say that 
He does not expect us to jettison our intelli- 
gences and wait for it. Yet I have known a 
holy man spend three days in these parts, 
knowing that he will not get back in a year, and 
devote the time for public prayers of two of 



OF THE BISHOPS' PRAYERS 181 

them to the recitation of complete Matins, with 
the utmost reverence and decorum and edifica- 
tion — to himself and the angels. 

Of course I do not recite the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer in that even and audible tone. I 
say the Canon of the Mass all but in silence. 
My own people and catechists know exactly 
what I am doing, thanks to the ritual and the 
bell. While I recite the first part the cate- 
chist says such words as these, and the people 
after him: "0 Almighty God— Send Thy Holy 
Spirit; Change this Bread — into the Body of 
Jesus; Change this Wine — into the Blood of 
Jesus," and at any rate even the heathen know 
what that means, and marvel. Then when the 
bell has rung, and the elevation has been made, 
again catechist and people speak: "0 Lord 
Jesus — Thou art here — We worship Thee on 
the altar; Father in Heaven — Accept this 
Sacrifice — of Thy Son Jesus Christ — Who died 
on Calvary — And is now on the Altar. ' ' And in 
the silent interval they do not need to be told 
to bow themselves in humble, trustful adora- 
tion. 

You see the difference, I take it. I do not say 
that natives used to this could give you a theo- 
logical disquisition on the Real Presence. I do 
not say that they even all believe it. I do not 
want to argue that it agrees or disagrees with 
ancient liturgies, and doubtless it is even hor- 
rifying to those who are still in eager and 



182 PILGRIM PAPERS 

clamorous doubt as to the precise moment of 
our Lord's coming and the precise manner. But 
I do say that nobody is hindered, except by a 
lack of mental power which is too great an 
obstacle for anything short of a miracle to 
overcome (and there is such among the na- 
tives), from perceiving that the Church teaches, 
to quote from St. Chrysostom, that as the 
shepherds found our Lord in the stable, so do 
Christians find Him on the altar. The Saviour 
of the World, the Lamb of God, is lifted up then 
in such a way that the most ignorant may look 
and live. 

My catechist this morning, not wholly used 
to such a mass, lost his head, clung to his Book 
of Common Prayer, rang bells wildly, forgot to 
say anything, and finally — -at any rate, this is 
the perplexed native 's 1 usual saving grace ! — said 
nothing. So after my communion I knelt down 
and said the easy prayers for him. Then I 
started to sing the " Agnus Dei," and that he 
was able to continue alone while I gave com- 
munion. That, too, they all did take up, al- 
though that again is not provided for in the 
rubrics of the Prayer Book. And — may I say 
it, my dear f — do you know that even then, per- 
plexed, worried, and tired as I was, there sud- 
denly stole over me a sense of the peace of God 
and of a Presence beyond all words. It is mar- 
vellous and wonderful how He comes again and 
again. It is against all reason to build an in- 



OF THE BISHOPS' PRAYERS 183 

tellectual position on feeling, against all my 
reason at least to defend Anglican orders by 
such an argument. I know it, and I have said 
it a score of times. But — well, perhaps there is 
a good deal in Fr. Faber's hymn, after all: 

"The Love of God is wider than the measures of man's 
mind, 
And the Heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind." 

Besides, of course, strict Roman theology 
allows that, seeing I am acting in good faith and 
that the people believe, they are fed with the 
Food of the spiritual Body of Christ. 

As we rode home Augustino spoke. 

"Why is it, Father," he said, "that the 
Prayer Book has so many long, hard prayers 
and so few short ones ? ' ' 

"Well, it was written for English people," I 
said feebly. 

Silence for a few minutes. Then 

"The father's prayers are very short and 
very beautiful. The people understand them." 

"They are not my prayers especially," I 
said. ' ' And besides any little prayers that you 
might make up and say to Jesus when He 
comes, would do instead, and they would be 
very likely better if you made them up your- 
selves. The priest, of course, has to say the 
hard, long prayers, but the people can talk to 
our Lord in their own way from their heart." 

"It is so, Father," he said, "but this people 



184 PILGRIM PAPERS 

is very ignorant. Why, even I grow mud- 
dled (!). Will not the father write an easy 
prayer-book for us, that we can understand ?" 

"He will not," the father replied. 

"Why not?" he demanded. 

I looked at him. What could I say? How 
could I tell him that one such was already 
written, but that it would be disloyal to give it 
him? How could I explain that its doctrine 
would not meet with general favour? How 
could I account for the fact that, as no two 
priests of the Anglican Communion ever cele- 
brate alike, it would tend to be a sectarian 
action if I were to publish such a book, and in 
any case be all but locally useless? So 

"It is the work of the Bishops," I said. 

"When will they do it, then?" he demanded. 

"I do not know," said I. 

Do you, my dear? Between ourselves, does 
anybody? 



21. OF A DISPUTED QUESTION 

I AM writing down for you to-day what I 
wrote mentally yesterday, so that I shall 
write in the historic present. It is a most 
wonderful night of stars and moon, oh, my 
friend, and I have not allowed Cyril to pitch 
my tent in order that I may take it all in. We 
are up again on the great hill-tops, having been 
down to the Berg Camp, for, I suppose, the last 
time. The moon is so bright that I can see 
rocks and grass and a little stream leaping and 
tumbling in molten silver. The horses graze 
just over yonder, and the night is so still that I 
can hear them cropping the grass and moving 
leisurely about. The stars are beyond my pen. 
I am on my back staring up at them, and if I 
stare long enough I leave the earth altogether 
and start off up to them. I can veritably feel 
the solid world swinging away under me, and I 
am just poised, or swiftly fleeting, through the 
viewless wastes of air. But I never make any 
appreciable headway, and, as you can guess, 
when I give the effort up in despair, I find that 
I have not even moved. All of which, my dear, 
is a parable of many things and not the least of 
what I must needs write to you. 

185 



186 PILGRIM PAPERS; 

Do you know, I am singularly happy. I sup- 
pose I ought not to be. I pinch myself again 
and again mentally to try to feel hurt, but it is 
no good. I am happy, and there is an end to it. 
I suppose I am happy because after great 
mental stress it is such a relief to come to a 
conclusion, and the people who would be an- 
noyed with me for coming to this conclusion are 
really the people who have no idea of what 
mental agony can be. Do you not think hon- 
estly that the people who call us poor Catholic- 
minded clergy of the Church of England hypo- 
crites and traitors are rather hard? They can 
never have known what it is to strive to see the 
right between conflicting claims till your brain 
reels, and your mind is in torment, and death 
would quite strictly be as much of a relief to 
you as it was sometimes to those poor souls on 
the rack. The very rack itself was less than the 
torment of the mind that honestly wants to do 
right and is not sure, and cannot, cannot see. 

And now, for some reason or another, I feel 
I see, not very much, but enough, and I am so 
happy, after all. 

But this is rather putting the cart before the 
horses, is it not? To begin properly, I have just 
paid my last ministerial visit to the Europeans 
at the Camp. You must picture the Camp — the 
Government Reserve with its half-dozen Euro- 
pean houses of officials and its two or three 
stores, not much in London, but a great deal 



OF A DISPUTED QUESTION 187 

when you are trekking on the Berg. Lest any- 
thing I may say should read rudely, do let me 
write it down at once that kinder, more hos- 
pitable, or more straightforward people I do 
not wish to meet than those at this Camp. They 
are all English, I think, for the most part the 
Public School breed grafted on a colonial stock. 
Heavens! I believe I have put my foot in it! 
But what I mean is, men bred at home in the 
Public School, yet somewhat more easy and 
open-hearted as a result of our mountains and 
stars and winds. You could hardly better that. 

I am happy, then, not because I have paid my 
last visit to them, but because it is my last min- 
isterial visit. There are still days of trek 
ahead, but I have done with the Camp. Four 
days in all have I been there, and on the Sun- 
day, as usual, I celebrated the Holy Com- 
munion, and then, later, said Matins and 
preached. The previous Sunday I was among 
natives, as I shall be the next, and it is because 
I have done with the serving of two religions 
that I am glad. For, my dear, stripped of all 
the study cobwebs, that is what it is. I am a 
Catholic priest (in theory) on the Berg; I am a 
Protestant minister (in fact) in the Camp. And 
the two religions are not beautifully comple- 
mentary ; they are very decidedly contradictory. 

Up on the Berg, as you must have seen by 
now from these letters, I just teach and act in 
accordance with my faith, and I give the natives 



188 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the simple, straightforward Catholic religion. 
Up there Jesus comes to the altar in His own 
adorable real Presence, and the bread when 
He has come is only trnly Bread if you write it 
with a capital B as one of His names. The 
offering of Him is a propitiatory Sacrifice for 
the living and the dead. Forgiveness is nothing 
other than the plan of God, the Sacrament of 
Penance. The companionship of the saints, and 
particularly of the most holy Mother of God, is 
our happiness and strength, and a God-given 
means of grace. That is my faith up there. 

Has it ever struck you what such as I have to 
do in the Camp? Believing all this, we have to 
act as if we did not. I tell the good folk that 
they ought "most chiefly' ' to confess their sins 
when they assemble and meet together; and I 
do not believe it. I have to place our Lord's 
Body in the hands of those who believe the 
Sacrament to be no more than bread. I have to 
offer the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, not 
in the words of the ancient Western rite which 
makes no doubt of it at all, but in the improved 
phraseology of a turncoat archbishop who most 
definitely believed the very contrary, or, at any 
rate, wrote in such a way that people who did 
so disbelieve might still happily attend the ser- 
vice. And I have studiously to ignore the inter- 
cessions of the whole company of heaven as if 
that was a matter of no importance, and I have 
to squeeze my own prayers for the dead into a 



OF A DISPUTED QUESTION 189 

crevice in the prayer for the Church Militant 
here on earth. Now what is this but the serving 
of two religions ? 

Of course some of my friends in the ministry 
would declare that I did wrong; that I ought 
either definitely to teach my faith and use the 
"additional devotions " (how that phrase 
makes me smile, because they are so very ad- 
ditional that there is mighty little left of the 
original!) which I use among the natives, or 
else that I ought to stick to the Prayer Book, 
perhaps, but make it quite clear, in sermon and 
manner, what I hold. Possibly I do attempt the 
last in some degree, but I am a sad coward, and, 
what is more, I believe I am cursed with some 
ability to see both sides of a question. "After 
all," I say to myself, "these good folk have 
been brought up in their faith by wiser, older, 
and more learned divines than I, and that same 
Protestant faith of theirs is still professed, un- 
rebuked and even honoured, in the Church at 
home by other wiser, older, and more learned 
divines." Here, too, there is no choice of a low 
or a high church, so that if I drove them from 
the altar (as in some cases even my moderate 
and tentative ministry has done, and as, if I 
did otherwise, I surely should) they would have 
nowhere else to go. 

Even more, I can never escape from the con- 
viction that they are more right than I. It is all 
very well. Cranmer and Parker and Whitgift 



190 PILGRIM PAPERS 

would have had no use for me. I fear that even 
Land would have been distressed could he have 
journeyed with me on the Berg these last few 
months. Still more, even if you reckon that this 
is a disputed question, it is a disputed question. 
I mean that I hold to one historic interpretation 
of the Prayer Book, and I have taken my stand 
on the supposition that it is meant to allow 
Catholicism at the least; that one may supple- 
ment it; that it is the Romish, and not the 
Catholic, doctrine of mass and relic and Purga- 
tory that the Articles forbid. But a third un- 
biassed person, having respect to the weight of 
learned opinion on either side, would surely feel 
that the question was still in dispute, and that 
therefore it is rough of me to act as if it were 
closed with these Englishmen of a different 
opinion on the face of the Berg. 

The question that confronts such as I am, 
therefore, is a singularly difficult one. It is a 
choice between a right and a wrong each way, 
and it seems impossible to get both the rights on 
the same side. Am I to accept what might truly 
seem the call of God and, so accepting, minister 
in a false position, or am I to make the position 
honest but as a result cease to minister? That 
is the present moral quandary, and you have to 
add to it the continual worry as to whether 
one's judgment about the Church of England 
at all is right or wrong — as to whether she is 
or is not a living part of the Catholic Church. 



OF A DISPUTED QUESTION 191 

Surely we are more to be pitied than most men, 
especially when we labour under the frown of 
those in high places and in an unsympathetic 
and hostile atmosphere. 

You may ask, my dear, why I feel I have 
settled the matter now. The answer is very 
simple : the Berg has done it for me. Its silence 
and majesty and unchangeableness seem to 
have been saying in my soul: "You complicate 
matters! You try to bear God's burden! You 
worry too much! Just you do what is plainly 
right, and be still." And it is perfectly plain 
to me that it is wrong to serve two masters and 
profess two religions at once, and that the 
double-facedness of the Anglican Church is no 
honest position for a person who has made up 
his mind. My mind, such as it is, is made up. 
Like my people up here, I know perfectly well 
that the ignorance, rudeness, and need of my 
soul are satisfied by the Catholic religion, and 
that alone. In the Church of my birth the truth 
of the Catholic religion is held in suspense. 
Question her as you will, there is no voice nor 
any that answers, unless the answer she gives 
is "I don't know," or "I shan't tell," which is, 
as a matter of fact, what the average man 
understands her to say. So long, then, as that 
is so, I am faced with the intolerable position 
of the Camp and the Berg, and I am bound to be 
in full communion with those who deny what I 
believe, and whose denials have the approbation 



192 PILGRIM PAPERS 

of the Church behind them as much as or more 
than my affirmations. Yon may have seen the 
reasons which the Bishop of Delaware has so 
ably given for his resignation of office and min- 
istry in the Church of England in America. I 
cannot better them, unless it be to add that I 
leave also for something of the reason that St. 
John is alleged to have left the Public Baths 
when he knew that Cerinthus was inside ! 

But you may still think it strange that I 
should be happy when such action involves so 
much — the leaving of these people of mine up 
here, of whom I have now written to you often, 
especially. Should I be? I wonder. You see, 
I have never been able to get away from the 
feeling that I have been deceiving them all 
along, for I have been coaxing them into a 
sheep-fold alleged to be secure against wolves 
when I know that the wolves actually lurk there. 
To cut out metaphors, you cannot think what 
such work is like. Anglican Church natives 
trek up here from elsewhere and find a different 
religion from that in which they were brought 
up. Trained catechists come to me, and I take 
them on, and then have to set about teaching 
them a new religion. On the other hand, my 
people go down from here, look in vain for what 
they have learned, and become lax and indif- 
ferent for want of the help they need. And the 
future looms with danger. Even now they are 
beginning to read, to get magazines from both 



OF A DISPUTED QUESTION 193 

points of view in the Church of England, or, 
even as one boy of mine recently, papers by 
Anglican divines denying the Lord's Divinity 
and historic Besurrection and Ascension. And 
it is I who have steered them into these troubled 
waters rather than into the Harbour of the 
Peace of God. 

So, you see, although I am sad deep down 
at leaving those who have taught me so much 
and who have reposed in me faith and love, still, 
in a way, I am so glad to be leaving a false posi- 
tion that all this is swallowed up. How differ- 
ent it would have been if I had been able single- 
heartedly to throw myself into this work, know- 
ing that I was building on a rock ! I cannot but 
envy the priests of the Eoman Mission here. 
When a man falls in that Mission, he can die 
gladly, for he knows another will step into his 
place to work with the same end in view and to 
teach the same things. He knows he is part of 
a world-wide Church in which heresy is ruth- 
lessly suppressed. His sheep may fall victims 
to the wolves, but it will be their own fault. 
There are none in the fold, nor can wolves enter. 

Thus, then, I do indeed grow sad. Oh, my 
dear, if only I had been different ! if only I had 
seen clearer years ago ! if only I had not been 
afraid ! But regrets are useless, and besides I 
do not think I am of the stuff of which such 
priests are made. Of all heroisms I know none 
to excel theirs. Faith is, of course, their shield 



194 PILGRIM PAPERS 

and anchor; but for all that it means much to 
give one's life to these fugged mountains, to 
spend the years tending these people, who, with 
all the glimpses of vision that they give you, 
are still stiff-necked, hard to understand, diffi- 
cult to befriend. These shepherds have left 
home, wife, children, fatherland, the joy of art 
and study, the rewards of men, even the joy of 
seeing much accomplished, the joy of raising a 
memorial in the earth. They are content, like 
their people, to live a while on the Berg's face 
and die, letting their dust scatter to the winds, 
unknowing and unknown. I am not cut out for 
that. Could I, for example, have left the 
thought of you? 

The thought of you! Yet have I truly won 
you? And I go out now, alone, to what? I do 
not know. The Eoman Church seems no mother 
to me, holding out tender arms, and I am not 
drawn, as they say converts are drawn, by the 
beauty and art of her churches and ritual. If I 
go to her, it will be because I must save my soul 
and I cannot find my Lord elsewhere. Yet as I 
write it is not the face of that age-long Church 
and Mistress that is before me, but rather 
yours, that I see as so dear, so very lovely, so 
tender in your love. Must I surrender you? 

Oh, my dear, my dear, there is a cloud over 
the face of the moon, and the wind is stirring 
mournfully among the mountain grasses, and 
the night grows chill. 



22. OF THE COST OF MISSIONS 

WILL you read a letter that is one sus- 
tained "grouse"? I rather want you 
to do so for a reason that I gave you the 
other day, when I said that I always feared, 
in writing and speaking about missions, the 
painting of a too golden, one-sided picture. 
Here and now I propose to expose to you the 
other side as it was shown to me in a happen- 
ing begun when last I was in this village, and 
concluded last night. 

It was at a place of which I am rather fond, 
where a chief is building a church for us him- 
self, and in which we had a score of Christians. 
The head of the little Christian community is a 
fellow with an Old Testament name whom I will 
call Hezekiah, for his real name is no better. 
Hezekiah, then, is a fairly wealthy man in flocks 
and herds, and he has many huts, and in one of 
them I have ever been used to stay. Several 
times have I come, at the close of a hot long 
day, and been very glad of my reception. A 
hut has been swept for me, milk and bread and 
sometimes meat seemingly freely offered, and I 
have felt myself among friends. When first I 
came to the Berg, I was told by an old priest of 

195 



196 PILGRIM PAPERS 

Hezekiah that lie had been baptised as a child, 
and might be looked upon as the " elder' 9 of 
that little Church. When I met him, I found 
at once that he was very ignorant, but I heard 
that he "took prayers,' ' and I did not conceive 
that he had any pretensions to be more than a 
Christian farmer. 

Well, at our last visit, then, after prayers and 
supper, came the shock. Hezekiah said he 
wanted to speak to me, and on coming in it was 
plain that the veneer had been stripped off. He 
began by saying that he had come for his 
money. Utterly mystified, I asked, "What 
money?" The money for his work these many 
years as a catechist, he said. I replied that I 
had no idea that he was a catechist ; where had 
he been trained? who had appointed him? still 
more, what had he done? 

That opened the floodgate. He named the old 
priest, who used before my time to make very 
occasional visits here, and he said he had been 
appointed catechist by him; that ever since he 
had worked for the Mission, teaching and pray- 
ing ; that we had come many times now, sleeping 
under his roof and eating his food ; and that he 
was tired of waiting and doing all this for 
nothing at all. And now he heard I was sending 
a new catechist . . . 

I am glad I kept my temper. I asked for the 
registers of his classes; he had none. I pointed 
out that there were practically no heathen 



OF THE^COST OF MISSIONS 197 

under instruction here, and that that was why I 
was sending a cateehist, recently trained at col- 
lege. I said I had never been told of his ap- 
pointment or that any salary had been prom- 
ised him, but that I would write to the old priest 
and inquire. And finally I apologised for eat- 
ing food which I had thought a gift, and I asked 
how much I owed him for it. 

In the months that followed I got at the truth. 
The old priest told me, astonished, that he had 
never called him cateehist and made an ap- 
pointment, still less named a salary, but that he 
had asked him, as a man who could read, to say 
Sunday prayers. Hezekiah had begged cassock 
and surplice, and had been in the habit of 
monotoning a mutilated version of Morning 
Prayer on "g" on and off ever since. He had 
never taught or wanted to teach. He was the 
big man in that black and white church dress, 
and the collects monotoned on "g" had been 
the beginning and the end of his missionary 
labours. Gradually the idea had dawned that 
"the Mission' ' ought to pay him. And now it 
had all come out. 

Last night I called him in, and did my best to 
put it right. I spoke of the duty every Chris- 
tian man owed to God. I told him that none of 
us were "paid" for religion, and that even we 
priests were only given a living wage, not as a 
wage, but as a means to live and devote our 
whole time to God's service. I urged that, as a 



198 PILGRIM PAPERS; 

matter of fact, simple prayers and simple in- 
structions would help people nearer to God 
than the sort of thing he had been doing. And 
— well, with the. best intentions, I only poured 
oil on the fire. He was very rude. When he 
had gone, I gave way to despair, for he had 
shown me how a mission can fail. 

It is our failure. Cassocks and surplices and 
monotoned prayers — oh, shades of Pusey and 
Keble, these can be the sepulchres of true 
religion! I feel like a Puritan and a Noncon- 
formist when I think of the folly of allowing 
ignorant natives to dress up and recite Matins. 
Then I feel like a Roman Catholic when I think 
how badly we fail to show what the Church of 
God really is. To them a nightmare of imagina- 
tion, called The Mission, run by rich white 
priests (why I don't think they know), is the 
Church, or else it's "Charch," as they hide- 
ously say, our agency, like that of the Mafora 
(or French Protestants) of the Ba-Roma (or 
Roman Catholics), for Europeanising the coun- 
try. The idea of its being the Ark of Salvation, 
the Kingdom of the Poor Thorn-crowned King 
in which it is an honour to serve for nothing 
with all one's earthly goods and powers — that 
is far from the generality of our converts. So 
have I catechists who will not stir five miles 
without "the Mission" finding them a horse, 
or use anything of their own in the service 
unless it is paid for. 



OF THE COST OF MISSIONS 199 

Poor Hezekiah ! What have we done for him 
these twenty years ? Alas ! nothing, I fear. His 
dull black mind is not really enlightened at all. 
His blind eyes have seen no vision. All his 
praying and all his dressing up has not once 
carried him to the threshold of that other world 
where one falls on one's face as one dead. The 
Gospel has not really reached him at all. His 
religion, like his name, is none other than that 
of the Kings of Israel and Judah, and maybe 
not as good as theirs. He cannot be placed 
among the Beatitudes at all, and if he has mas- 
tered the Ten Commandments, of what good 
are they? "Master, all these have I kept from 
my youth up. . . . But one thing thou lack- 
est. . . . ' ' Hezekiah has not learned the initial 
lessons of Christ — Love and Sacrifice. 

Maybe I have not said enough to make you 
see that this is really a true picture. If so, I 
can only ask you to believe that I would not 
exaggerate it. Maybe you think I ought not to 
write so of any of our people, and that in any 
case he is no worse than many Europeans. But 
what is the use of always keeping silence, and, 
besides, is it any excuse to compare him with 
our own pagan white folk, to whom the Christ 
is no more than a shadow in history? What is 
the use of hiding it? This is where Missions 
fail. 

Hardly ever would I dole out cassocks and 
surplices if I had my way, hardly ever would I 



200 PILGRIM PAPERS 

give practically untrained men the Book of 
Common Prayer, and never, I think, would I 
teach them to read its prayers. Nor would I 
build them churches ; nor, as soon as there were 
any number of Christians, would I pay their 
priests ; nor, as a priest, would I ever arrive at 
a village with money or food or horses of my 
own. 

What do you think of all this ? The dream of 
a visionary? Perhaps, but can you dispute the 
dream with me? Is not the Kingdom within 
you? Does it not lie in love and reality and 
sacrifice? Is not the church of mud and reed, 
erected by the people themselves because they 
want to build a house to which God may come 
in His Sacrament, better than any stone and 
iron building built for them by Europeans? It 
seems to me that the whole essence of Chris- 
tianity lies in the life within. That must spring 
of itself and grow and bring forth fruit of 
architecture and ritual and service as well of 
transformed lives. It did so in Europe, and it 
must do so in Africa. Augustine came barefoot 
from the glories of Eome, and the church in 
Canterbury was a lowly Saxon building of mud 
and thatch. 

So with the priest, too. True, the Seventy 
were sent out with purse and staff, but still they 
were to abide only where welcomed and eat 
what was freely given them. So soon as the 
Church in any place was formed and needed its 



OF THE COST OF MISSIONS 201 

whole-time minister the labourer was worthy of 
his hire. A white man hired by natives ! Even 
so. It was God Himself who said: "I am among 
you as he that serveth. ' ' 

My dear, we mix up Christianity and Educa- 
tion, Christianity and Civilisation, even Chris- 
tianity and shirts and trousers. People say one 
must, but it is a lie. I have been a missionary 
all my days, though they may be few, and, thank 
God, I have never taught any one to wear 
trousers ! But I have laboured all my time with 
a load on my back, for people would think of me 
as interested in schools or as a white man or as 
a Europeanising agency. But the truth is that 
you do not make a man a Christian by teaching 
him to read the Bible, or by showing him how to 
dress, or even by making roads through his 
country and giving him police. All is sub- 
servient to this : that you awake his soul to see 
God. Offer him the simple sacramental religion 
of Jesus Christ. He may refuse it, but that is 
not your business. He may accept it; then let 
the rest follow. And if he accepts it, he himself 
will give of the best he has in labour, gifts, and 
love, to build his own church and to feed and 
cherish his own priest. These are the two last 
things of which poor Hezekiah thinks, and no 
wonder, for I do not believe he has ever seen 
what Christianity really is. A native priest 
wrote the other day publicly that Christianity 
was Education and Good Manners, and I do not 



202 PILGRIM PAPERS 

even blame him much, for I fear we have taught 
him so. 

Possibly, having got so far, you will still have 
enough toleration left to ask what I would sug- 
gest. Practically I believe the answer is a very 
simple one: the work of Missions should 
primarily be the work of religious orders, and, 
just as when a man proposed to build a tower, 
the work of Missions ought not to be attempted 
unless the cost has first been considered. Nor is 
the cost to be reckoned in £ s. d. Eaymond Lull 
reckoned better when he worked out the sum in 
blood and tears. Christ's gospel can only be 
preached by Christ's men. Father Lemans, 
with £ 20 a year, carried from place to place by 
his people and fed by them, never dispensing 
surplices and cassocks and never asking his con- 
verts to recite the Breviary at one another, is 
doing something. Very likely he has his Heze- 
kiahs : I should not be surprised ; St. Peter had 
his Ananias and Sapphira and his Simon 
Magus. But Father Lemans, like St. Peter, is 
under no delusions in regard to them, and, alas S 
we are. 

There you are . . . 

That is an honest grouse! But now I am 
going to say the General Confession in the first 
person singular and go to bed. 



23. OF A MOUNT OF TEMPTATION 

SUPPOSE I write you a genuine but old- 
fashioned missionary story in the best 
missionary society meeting style! I can 
do so, for one such has just been truly enacted 
with your humble servant somewhat prom- 
inently in the cast. It may interest you, so here 
goes! And wasn't my last letter a horrid 
grouse! Here is the corrective. 

There is a chief — we will call him Motseke — 
who has asked me several times, personally, 
and by messenger, to come to his village, and 
twice I have tried to visit him. But he has been 
always so delightfully vague as to the where- 
abouts of his "place,'' like most mountain 
natives, who make no account of half a day's 
ride in one direction or another, that I have 
never been able to find him. Last winter I de- 
layed a day looking for him and found him not, 
but merely a heavy snowstorm instead. How- 
ever, this time, seeing I have days in some sort 
to spare on the Berg now, I set out with definite 
intent. 

I knew he was on a certain river, and I deter- 
mined to follow its course till I found him. The 
map marked no road and no villages, but that 

203 



204 PILGRIM PAPERS 

was a little matter, for the map was made some 
ten years ago, and everybody, except the people 
who want the Berg for the white man, knows 
how rapidly the native population is growing 
and filling it. We set out, therefore, at dawn 
one day from a fixed point ; and we determined 
to follow the river until we reached another 
fixed and known point, for Motseke must lie 
between the two. There was a road of sorts, 
but such a road! The river, called "The 
Twister" in the native, does indeed wind and 
twist, and the tiny trail wound with it round the 
mountains through which the Twister has cut 
its way these ages since. There is nothing more 
tiring than such a road. You come to a great 
fissure in the mountain, and across it, going 
round the bend to a second fissure, you see your 
trail. It is perhaps a few hundred yards away. 
Yet you must follow the trail right up the fis- 
sure, cross the inevitable little trickle running 
down it, and wind wearily round the precipice 
of the other side. Anything up to an hour of 
hard, stony work will bring you at last to the 
point you saw. 

For the best part of a day we travelled so, 
and then we cut up between two peaks on to a 
table-land that was rich in grass and cattle. 
Things looked promising, for the herdmen 
nodded sagely at the name of Motseke. We 
crossed the pastures, and towards sunset the 
path fell away down a valley. We rode harder. 



OF A MOUNT OF TEMPTATION 205 

Seven villages of dependants we passed, and in 
the dusk made the eighth, that stood on guard 
at the entrance to the valley. Cyril rode up and 
inquired, and turned and waved his hand. Mot- 
seke was found at last. 

He came out, an agile, eager, hearty, but 
white-haired old man, and he all but ran to meet 
me. He seized my hands, and began to bellow 
to his people. So excitedly and fast he spoke 
that I hardly caught his words, but Cyril inter- 
jected translations : "A priest had come at last ! 
For seven years had he, Motseke, been seeking 
a priest to visit his village, and, lo ! none could 

be found. He had been to and to 

and to , and then he had heard that I 

travelled in the mountains, and he had come to 
me. Ho ! ho ! ho ! A priest had come at last ! 
Now they would have a school and a church and 
a catechist. Had I not seen all the villages, 
all his herds? and all were mine!" And at 
that point he let go of my hands to gesticulate 
and shout to his men. 

I told you what sort of a story this would be, 
and so you must have the local colour. There I 
stood, in my dreadful, tattered old Norfolk 
jacket, my face peeled and burnt, my horses 
around drooping with fatigue. Before us was 
the semicircle of huts on the hillside, below us 
the green valley, the great river, and the purple 
mountain barrier rising beyond. Stars were 
even then peeping in the paling sky, and it was 



206 PILGRIM PAPERS 

very still. Smoke from dung fires rose per- 
pendicularly in grey columns, and one caught 
the scent of it while the men came running at 
the old man's bidding with his gifts. They 
piled them at my feet. A sheep, a turkey, a 
couple of fowls, eggs, milk, mafi, a dish of raw 
potatoes and some beans — these were among 
the first offerings, and when they had done the 
old fellow reiterated that all he had was mine. 
He then asked for how long I would stay. "A 
month ?" "No," I said, "that was impos- 
sible." "Well, two weeks, then?" I shook my 
head. "A week?" "No," said I; "I must 
leave the next morning," and so, much as I 
was grateful for his gifts, a few eggs, some 
milk, and a bowl of mafi were all that I wanted. 
Poor old fellow! It was really pathetic. He 
sat down on a big stone, and put his hands to 
his head. "For seven years," said he, "I have 
waited for a priest to come to my place, and 
when he comes he stays one night!" But I 
could not help it. I had already spent more 
time than I could afford. I was due at the Mis- 
sion, where people would be waiting for me, in 
two days, and I knew it would take all my time 
to get there. 

I moved inside the lelapa, or semicircular 
fence of reeds which acts as a break-wind in 
front of the huts, and asked for water in which 
to wash. They brought me a big bowl of warm 
water, and I stripped to the waist and got down 



OF A MOUNT OF TEMPTATION 207 

to it. In the middle of my ablutions the old 
chief came in, and immediately, to my con- 
fusion, called his wives and his people generally 
to watch. A small crowd gathered, and to them 
he made a speech something as follows : 

"My people, see the priest of the Church! 
Have I not always told you that we would have 
a priest of the Church here or no Church at all? 
You know the native baruti" (i.e., teachers) 

"of " (and he named another Mission). 

"What do they do if they come here? Do they 
wait for me to give them a sheep ? No ! They 
demand it. Do they kill and share it? No! 
They drive it before them to their own place. 
But this priest — of all our gifts he says, 'Give 
me but a little milk and a few eggs, and I am 
content ! Give me but a little water in which to 
wash, and I have all I need ! ' Look at him now, 
oh, my people ! See his white skin. His heart 
is as white as his skin ! Did I not say we should 
have a priest of the Church or none ? Did I not 
say well?" 

(Chorus.) "Ah, thou saidest it! Thou said- 
est well ! ' ' 

They gave me a hut, of course, and I dined off 
hard-boiled eggs, bread, mafi and jam, and tea; 
but then, before I turned in, I went outside. It 
was a night of almost full moon, and I climbed 
up a little behind the huts and sat on a rock to 
watch. The valley lay bathed in the misty light. 

If I listened hard enough, I could just hear 



208 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the water of tlie river a long way off" in the 
intense stillness. Small sounds, indeed, came up 
to me from the unseen huts of villages at a dis- 
tance — the bark of a dog, the cry of a child, 
once the crow of a sleepy cock, that ended 
ludicrously as if the bird had fallen asleep 
again in the middle of it. So I sat and surveyed 
the native world, the whole valley all but un- 
visited, its villages unmarked on the map, un- 
evangelised, and I thought of many things. 

It did just enter my head to wonder for a 
moment if it might not be better for me to leave 
it as I found it, and build no school and no 
church. But I thought so only for a minute. 
My withdrawal would not mean that Western 
civilisation would not come, nor would it mean 
that the natives would cease to go to mine and 
store and return with European treasures — and 
vices. Moreover, Christianity is not to me (as 
a gentleman in a smoke-room once put it) "a 
highly developed philosophy unsuited to the 
native even if he can in the least understand it. ' ' 
To me it is the highway to God of which it is 
written that wayfaring men, though fools, can- 
not err therein; it is the ark that floats above 
the waters of a surely drowning world. 

And yet have I not already told you that I do 
intend to go away? Well, my dear, that night 
I questioned that decision more intensely than 
I have done for any day these last two months. 
I think that moonlit valley side was my mount 



OF A MOUNT OF TEMPTATION 209 

of temptation. It may sound extreme to you, 
but it seemed to me that these people were 
offered me if I would but fall down before the 
Tempter. " Sacrifice your conception of truth 
and right for the empire of these' ' — that is how 
it came to me. There was the appeal of their 
weakness, their eager welcome, their lovable- 
ness, and their need, and against it only that 
my religious system does not seem to me honest 
or true. But its truth and honesty are in grave 
dispute, and many hold that it has both ; more- 
over, it is so insidious a whisper that says: 
" You, and you alone, will have to do with them. 
You can teach as you will and build as you will. 
What does the Lambeth Conference or the 
Anglican attitude in England matter to you up 
here? For the sake of these poor souls, stay 
on!" 

Then I remembered again the two mission- 
aries returning to China at the time of the 
Boxer riots. Urged to avoid peril, one said: "I 
must return because of my sheep," but the 
other answered more quietly: "I must return 
because of the Shepherd." It is a strange par- 
adox, but I, who would stay on account of the 
sheep, feel that I must go on account of the 
Shepherd. A man must be true to Christ first 
— true, at any rate, to what he cannot but feel 
for himself is involved by being true to Christ. 

So in the end, if it be a conquest, I conquered. 
Being a modern, I knocked out the ashes of my 



210 PILGRIM PAPERS 

pipe and went down the rocky hillside to bed, 
but, my dear, it was my boat and my nets that 
I left there, and the dead to bury their dead. 

Next morning I did all I could do, up to the 
light I have to-day. I chose a site for a church ; 
I settled details ; I promised windows and door 
on the part of the Mission if they would build, 
and roof — that is, I offered to do what they 
cannot do. And last, but far from least, I set 
up a little altar within that reed fence, and I 
offered the Holy Sacrifice in the clear, sweet 
morning light in the presence of the one Chris- 
tian woman, her half-dozen christened children, 
and at least a hundred heathen. To them I 
explained that I was making the greatest 
prayer to God on their behalf that could be 
made. If a man would gain his end of a chief, 
did he not bring sheep or ox? Who were we 
that God Almighty and All Holy should hear 
us? But we brought in this Prayer a Victim, 
and for His sake God would hear. And that 
Victim! None other than His Son, Who by a 
miracle would there, unseen but surely, change 
Bread and Wine into His living self. And to 
God's Majesty I said in my secret heart : "Have 
Thou respect, God, not to my weakness, my 
ignorance, my sin, but to the Sacred Victim on 
ten thousand Catholic altars this day through- 
out Thy world, with which I do at least will to 
be one." 

As shortly after I lifted the Sacrifice in my 



OF A MOUNT OF TEMPTATION 211 

hands for all to see, my upturned face caught 
the first rays of the sun, just risen high enough 
in the east to overtop that reed fence. Its 
splendour fell on the bowed and awed heathen 
group behind, and dazzled my poor eyes; and 
to me it seemed no less than a sign that while I 
was yet speaking He had heard. 

"We were camped on the sand 
By a fire so good to see 
Under a tree so grand, 

And the stars were over the tree. 

"That night aside the fire 
Learn'd I my road to go — 
In the joy of a God's Desire, 
In the ruth of a Rood of woe. 

"A fire on a rock in the sand 
Faith lit at dawn for me — 
Under a Tree so grand, 

With a Star yet over that Tree." 

Arthur Shearly Cripps. 



24. OF EELICS AND FRIENDS 

NOT long ago I wrote you a letter in which 
I found myself talking to you about 
loneliness, and I want to go on and tell 
you something more that is in my heart to say. 
For to-day we rode five hours in the morning 
under a blistering sun, and when the midday 
off-saddle became a necessity, I told Cyril that 
I would find a spring of really cold water and 
some shade if I had to walk five miles for it. I 
should think I walked one mile at least anyhow. 
The water in the little open streams was warm, 
as it often is, for it flows shallow over the rocks 
with the sunlight on it all day; but one can 
nearly always find, high up above the stream, 
some little cool spring that leaps up in a bed of 
green straight from the bowels of the earth, to 
trickle down to the main current below. I not 
only found such an one, but one that sprang up 
in a tiny cave completely sheltered from the 
glare outside. The cave overlooked a wide, 
deserted valley into which the brook ran, itself 
following a crevasse in the side of the hill that 
had an air of complete solitude. There were no 
huts near. The grass was untrampled, the 
flowers ungathered. The water plants grew 
rank and unbroken, and when I sat down and 

212 



OF RELICS AND FRIENDS 213 

kept still, there was no sound at all but the 
trickle of the stream. It was intensely restful. 
I thought of Piccadilly Circus without the least 
envy — just then, at any rate ! And it dawned 
on me that I really did not want at that moment 
even you ! 

Well, as I lay in the shade of that rock I went 
over in detail with satisfaction an orgy of 
destruction in which I indulged a few months 
ago. I had turned out, then, all my old letters 
and papers and photographs and treasures, and 
destroyed them ruthlessly. I barely kept one. 
There were letters from my people and my 
friends, and letters from the great men (to me) 
that I once knew — letters of congratulation, ad- 
vice, criticism ; letters from several parts of the 
world about my books; letters on being or- 
dained, on leaving my first curacy, on coming 
out to South Africa; and so on. There were 
photographs of boyish holidays, of Cambridge, 
of my first parish — and all were destroyed. 
There were poems and essays and short stories. 
How queer it is to read what one thought splen- 
did and treasured years ago ! All went. There 
were old diaries and some faded flowers and 
some quaint relics, and I burnt them all. At 
first I thought I would save a few — this letter 
for its signature, that for its contents; this 
photograph for its sentiment and that because 
the subject of it is a big person to-day ; but they 
all went into the fire in the end. Or at least I 



214 PILGRIM PAPERS] 

will be quite honest: I kept what would pack 
into a small pocket case, but that was all. When 
I had finished I felt free to go. 

Why does one keep these things, do you sup- 
pose? I expect you have often read the biog- 
raphy of some bishop or statesman, and rather 
wondered at the host of relics there seemed to 
be of him when he came to die. I have, at any 
rate. As one reads one sees the man gathering 
things about him consciously and unconsciously, 
not only possessions, hut the accumulation of 
years, little, worthless relics that he and others 
treasured. This one, when they come to write 
his life, tells a tale of the nursery, and that 
records an incident of school life. Here is a 
letter in which one can read what the Prime 
Minister said to him when he became a bishop, 
and here another telling us what he said to the 
Prime Minister. It flows on almost endlessly, 
but of course there is an end. And at last you 
have the two-volume biography at half a guinea 
a volume, pre-war price ! 

Now do not be a beast and say either of the 
things you are thinking! To begin with, these 
are not sour grapes. I am not running down 
such people's biographies because mine is not 
likely to be written; indeed, I am not running 
down such biographies at all. I find them 
curious and interesting, very human, if a little 
perplexing. And I did not destroy papers and 
letters because it would not have done to have 



OF RELICS AND FRIENDS 215 

had them read! No, I destroyed them for an 
entirely personal reason, for a reason which I 
herein intend to set out before your Worship, 
and which I thought out all over again at our 
midday halt to-day. 

It seems to me, then, that the mind of man, 
designed to be his servant, is an extremely 
subtle and dangerous servant. If a man does 
not take care, his mind runs away with him be- 
fore he knows it, and that in all kinds of ways, 
not the least the way in which a person becomes 
persuaded to accumulate possessions, and par- 
ticularly what I have called relics. We say: "I 
can't destroy that: it reminds me of So-and-so 
— such a person, such a holiday, such a place. ' ' 
We say (chiefly to ourselves): "Oh, I'll keep 
that letter: it will cheer me up one day to see 
that So-and-so appreciated my work. ' ' And so 
the relics gather till a man has sacks of them, 
drawers full, boxes full, desks full, until, indeed, 
a man has no idea what hosts of such things he 
possesses, and he cannot lay his hand on any- 
thing because he has so much. 

But all that is great foolishness. It ties up 
the spirit. To begin with, it is no use looking 
back, and no use whatever trying to recapture 
the spirit of the past. The very confession that 
one wants to do so is the confession of a failure. 
Past things and people impressed us, and if 
there was any value in them, they left their im- 
pressions upon us. Those impressions went to 



216 PILGRIM PAPERS 

the moulding of us, and we are what we are 
because of them. But eyes front! What was 
moulded into you is yours, and what was not so 
moulded can never now truly be yours. It is 
waste of time and, what is worse, waste of senti- 
ment to look back wistfully or regretfully or 
even happily. The past is past except so much 
of it as was assimilated by you and so carried 
on to the present. 

Then the half of that looking back is vanity. 
I, for example, hated to destroy my old stories 
and verses. Truth to tell, I felt tender towards 
them and still half believed in them. But no, 
they are not really of any value ; if I could write 
then, I could write better to-day. Let us have 
some test and destroy ruthlessly what does not 
come up to it. For myself, one sort of test is, I 
think, publication. If one has practically no 
name or reputation, no publishers will take 
work unless they think it has merit. Of course 
a publisher may make a mistake either way, in 
the rejecting or the accepting, but it is a test, 
and given a reputable publisher and reasonable 
work, it is no bad one. As for those things of 
yesterday, that then one loved so much and set 
such store upon, into the fire with them ! Only 
a genius writes imperishable stuff at twenty- 
three, and even he will write it again and better 
at thirty-three. 

As a matter of fact, that there are exceptions 
does no more than prove the rule, and it is no 



OF RELICS AND FRIENDS 217 

use legislating for oneself on the basis of a pos- 
sible exception. Such, case law is always bad 
law. Why worry with the dead of past years? 
Let the dead bury their dead. The untram- 
melled spirit is likely to prove of more value 
than any litter of past years, and it seems to me 
that the spirit is trammelled by all this sort of 
thing. And it is so also with possessions. I 
think I would rather have access to some one 
else 's garden than have one of my own ; I would 
rather the great pictures were in a gallery than 
in my house ; and I would rather be able to visit 
a palace than live in it. To have and to hold 
brings worries, or breeds a soporific satisfac- 
tion. Very often it does both. To possess, too, 
is very largely to be tied down. That is true of 
material things in actual fact, and it is largely 
true of the spirit. Doubtless to have continually 
to fight for life and to have to wonder where the 
next suit or the next meal is coming from is 
just as bad, but at any rate that may breed the 
dauntless spirit. But it is not even a dauntless 
spirit that I want particularly. I want rather 
a whimsical, light-hearted, indifferent-to-things 
spirit, a spirit that takes the best from each 
moment and each experience, and then drops 
the husk of it and goes on. I want a spirit that, 
if creative, will be content to create and leave, 
leave for others to use if they want to do so, 
leave without a concern or a regret if others 
find no use for the work of one's brain. After 



218 PILGRIM PAPERS 

all, for the creator creating is its own reward; 
if others enjoy, their enjoyment may he allowed 
to gladden one for a moment or so, hut it mast 
not be allowed to satiate. 

All this is so true about one's friends. A 
friendship that requires a correspondence to 
keep it up is worthless, as worthless as a love 
that requires the contemplation of relics for its 
stimulus. So long as there is gain in a friend- 
ship exchange of ideas and intercourse will 
flow naturally from it; but friendship must 
breed that exchange, and not require the ex- 
change in order to exist. People say: "It is 
hard to keep up with one's friends!" But I 
would say that the moment one is conscious of 
having to strive to keep up with a friend, that is 
the moment in which that friendship becomes 
worthless. Do not, then, put it in a drawer and 
make an effort to pull it out now and again and 
look at it. You and I, swung across each other's 
track by the whirl of life, exchange glances and 
instinctively hold out hand to hand. And it is 
very, very good that it should be so. Hand in 
hand you and I press forward together, and, 
my dear, it is more than happy, this friendship 
of ours, is it not? But if the whirl inexorably 
swing us apart, or if that handclasp of ours 
should cease to be the clasp of mutual help and 
assent and become a tie which holds either of us 
back, why, then God help us to part with a 
smile, and God keep us from looking behind. 



OF RELICS "AND FRIENDS 219 

We shall have had our day, its best, for as much 
as it was best we shall carry always in our 
hearts; for to-morrow we have always to live. 

No, the world is very full of fair things and 
good comrades. There is the unimprisonable 
beauty of its mountains and forests and seas 
and plains, and there is the marvellous beauty 
of the works of its children in the days gone by. 
And always there are the sun and the rain and 
the wind for to-day. I would tramp gaily 
through it, then, yes, tramp through it in spirit 
though I live out my days in one village, re- 
membering that all the good is mine to take, and 
mine to keep always provided I give it all away. 
The joy of the morning song of the birds is 
mine always; the joy of the dew-dusted flowers 
is mine always; the joy of the canvases of the 
great artists, of the buildings of the great 
Faith, of the laughter and bravery of humanity, 
all mine always, so long as I do not try to grasp 
and store my treasure, but speak of it, write of 
it, live in the strength of it, and create through 
the love of it. And when I come to lay down my 
stick and traveller's knapsack for the last time, 
I would that there should be nothing more of 
mine to dispose of, nor any treasure other than 
that which the souls that God, of His goodness, 
has given me have taken to themselves long 
since. 

You remember Francis Thompson's end, and 
how there was nothing left but his published 



220 PILGRIM PAPERS 

works, and a small box of odds and ends con- 
taining old pens that would not write, a broken 
pocket-knife, a few bits of string, some un- 
opened letters — a pathetic little collection, they 
said. But I like that, especially the unopened 
letters, for a letter opens itself, or else it is not 
worth opening. And the other day I came 
across an all but forgotten poem on another 
poet, a few verses that carry with them that 
wonderful quality of real poetry that cannot be 
explained and that goes straight to the heart. 
They have gone straight to my heart, and I be- 
lieve that they will go straight to yours. If 
they could be a little true of me, I would be very 
glad. Here they are: 

"He came to the desert of London Town, 
Grey miles long; 
He wandered up and he wandered down, 
Singing a quiet song. 

"He came to the desert of London Town, 
Mirk miles broad; 
He wandered up and he wandered down, 
Ever alone with God. 

"There were thousands and thousands of human kind 
In this desert of brick and stone; 
But some were deaf, and some were blind, 
And he was there alone. 

"At last the good hour came; he died, 
As he had lived, alone; 
He was not miss'd from the desert wide: 
Perhaps he was found at the Throne." 



25. OF CONCLUSIONS 

SO you think my letters are a strange mix- 
ture, and you want to know what I really 
do think about things ! I can forgive you 
the first statement, because I suppose they 
really are a mixture. But why not? I never 
could see that it was a just view of life that kept 
religion in one watertight compartment, love in 
another, business in a third, and so on. Every- 
thing is part of a whole, as God made it, and the 
other is an artificial arrangement for which I 
have no use. If I cannot love and enjoy all the 
more intensely because I believe, then there is 
something wrong with my belief. That is one 
of the things I think, anyway, my dear ; and, for 
the rest, I am really engaged in trying to find 
that highway through life in which the way- 
faring men, though fools, shall not err. It has 
been promised, and I believe it to be there. Up 
here, high on the Berg, I think one has a chance 
to descry it. 

But your demand for something like a clear 
statement interests me. After ail, my time is 
nearly up here, and perhaps it is time I made 
you one, time, too, that I made myself one, since 

221 



222 PILGRIM PAPERS 

soon I shall be down from the Berg and back in 
the rush and confusion. 

Very well, then: I think there are just two 
problems in life. The first is the adjustment of 
Nature and Religion, and the second is the dis- 
covery of the true Religion. Possibly I have 
not said much about the first, but it undoubtedly 
stands first. It is always in my mind as I ride 
about on the face of this old Berg, and I fail to 
see how it can help being there, since one is so 
close to Nature up here. Among the flowers 
and mountains under the sun and the stars, and 
dealing with natives, one is truly close to 
Nature, and I am bound to confess that I find 
Nature a great problem. I can see law and 
impulse and purpose in Nature, but all I see 
perplexes me enormously. On the one hand, my 
mind — such as it is — cannot get away from the 
belief that Nature is God's business, but, on the 
other hand, it seems to me a strange business 
for God to be mixed up in. For example, the 
other day I rode with a good fellow who made 
certain enthusiastic observations as to design in 
the world. We had been watching dung-beetles, 
and he said that when he considered the won- 
derful scavenger system of Nature — beetles, 
rats, flies, and so on — and the wonderful bal- 
ance of things, he saw God's hand in it all. I 
assented — cautiously. I, too, see a wonderful 
system; I, too, utterly fail to be able to think 
that a purpose and a system can grow out of 



OF CONCLUSIONS 223 

nothing without a mind behind, that a blind 
force could come into existence blindly and pro- 
duce a world. But if a Mind designed this 
world, it seems to me to be a Mind as much in- 
terested in the well-being of a typhus bacillus as 
in man. Flies, for example — they clean up dirt, 
but the diseases they spread have slain more 
men than all the wars. Why? Because Nature 
is just as interested in finding a suitable home 
for a microbe and breeding him as she is in 
doing the same for man. We are all part of a 
system, yes, but of a ravening, heartless, colos- 
sal system in which life matters, and not man. 

So I come to it that man is an animal; that 
his passions and impulses are really his law; 
that conventions and human arrangements 
ought to be broad-based on Nature, unless you 
can produce some other and stronger authority. 
Given that, of course, our systems ought to be 
based on that authority. They ought not to try 
to ride two horses at once, as I think they do. 
But let us set that problematical authority aside 
for a moment. Then a certain programme pre- 
sents itself. 

Take, for example, the big sexual questions. 
Nature is out to breed men — and microbes — as 
hard as she can. She has designed the sexes to 
attract each other, and love is really her little 
joke. Man, however, is the one animal that has 
really learned the art of combination, and he is 
putting up a struggle, not merely for existence, 



224 PILGRIM PAPERS 

but for a very big place in the sun. He is going 
to do bis best to check Nature in the matter of 
microbes and to develop Nature in the matter 
of himself. The State at present is our biggest 
human organisation, and when I think of the 
State and Nature, it seems to be that I see a 
social and sexual programme to which, maybe, 
we are coming, but coming all too slowly. The 
State ought to breed children, without a doubt. 
It ought to encourage the sexual union of the 
fittest, and see that if the non-fit take that for 
which their nature craves, everything is done 
that can be done to prevent the natural dis- 
astrous consequences. Surely that is the merest 
common-sense. Moreover, education has made 
man and woman equals, and the State ought to 
allow for that. In a word, I can see nothing for 
it logically, on this hypothesis, but Eugenics, a 
very advanced socialism, the wholesale intro- 
duction of the easiest possible Divorce system, 
and so on. So, and only so, can man on the 
earth hope to win out against his fellow- 
creatures, and direct Nature to his own ends. 

But is this all! Well, on the face of the Berg 
I realise as never before that men have souls, 
even black men, slaves to Nature though they 
are. And I realise that this visible world is 
only a tiny matter in comparison with the in- 
visible that touches us at every turn. The whole 
of it, Nature and all its laws, is but the garment 
of something else. I am more sure of these 



OF CONCLUSIONS 225 

things than of anything else. Maybe I am a 
colossal fool, but honestly, as I look out over 
these mountains, I see the spiritual a thousand 
times more clearly than the material. A flower 
dumbfounds me, for although I see the flower, I 
see far more plainly God. 

To me, then, you see, cutting right across 
Nature and her ravening laws, comes the ex- 
pectation of what I shall call Grace. By that 
I mean the expectation of something that will 
lift us out of this world of apparently ceaseless 
and aimless becoming, something which will be 
the authority of the soul, something which the 
God Who designed Nature has also designed by 
which we may win free in the end from this, 
ravening old world, transmuting the baser 
metals as we do so. And to fit the expectation 1 
comes the Catholic Vision, as I shall call it. 

You cannot prove that a flower is beautiful, 
and you do not want a proof. Just so, this 
Catholic Vision appeals to me, arrests me, 
dominates me, without a proof, though I do not 
say there are no proofs. To me the story of 
Bethlehem is so penetratingly, wonderfully 
beautiful that I cannot think of it without tears. 
God in a human mother's arms, and in such a 
mother's, and in such a wise — the idea is more 
lovely than the morning star, more masterful 
than the sun at noon. From it the Catholic 
scheme flows as sweetly and as naturally as a 
brook from a spring. Such union of the human 



226 PILGRIM PAPERS 

and Divine would inevitably lead to the forma- 
tion of a human and Divine society like the 
Catholic Church. Her idea of the Sacraments 
is no more and no less than Nature shot through 
by Grace, and every hillside on the face of the 
Berg shouts to me of the reasonableness and 
likelihood of it. Her dogmas do not seem to me 
dogmas at all, but the most obvious statements 
of the inevitable. Take one such, and we will 
take one of the most disputed — the Immaculate 
Conception. Good heavens! Could I believe 
Almighty God to design to be born of a woman, 
and to think nothing before or after, of the 
woman? Would He not have prepared His 
mother like "a garden enclosed"? And as to 
the method, why it is so natural, so simple, so 
beautiful, that it appeals to me, again, as the 
flower appeals, and requires exactly the same 
"proof"! 

"Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed . . . 
With voices low and lanterns lit; 
So very simple is the road, 
That we may stray from it." 

I can see, then, with what authority such a 
vision ought to speak in the affairs of men. The 
Catholic Church might well dictate a marriage 
and sexual law, based not on man as an animal 
and Nature, but on man as a soul and Grace. 
And if Parliaments of States sat truly beneath 
the symbol of the Incarnation, of Bethlehem, 



OF CONCLUSIONS 227 

their duty would be simple enough, and their 
authority real. Man might listen if their laws 
were based on this. 

But I told you my second problem. I see a 
Catholic Vision, but has it existence in fact? 
St. John saw the New Jerusalem descending to 
earth as a bride adorned for her husband, but 
is the New Jerusalem still in the clouds? 
Plainly enough do I see the Vision; plainly 
enough do I see the ornaments of the bride; 
plainly do I see that she is fit for her Husband ; 
plainly, to leave parables, do I see that 
Catholicity might make Man ready for God. 
But, I ask myself doubtfully, has that Vision 
substance on earth? Have our dreams come 
true? 

I was born, as you know, in the Protestant 
religion. It is a hateful thing to write anything 
against what others hold dear, but all I can say 
is that in Protestantism I see no possible real- 
isation of this Vision. In its many forms I see 
only human ideas, full of the faults of the cen- 
turies that gave them birth, irrational, illogical, 
and often unnatural. No form of Protestantism 
can hold me any longer. If that were all, I 
should write to you as a reverent agnostic, and 
I would fling myself and such energies as I pos- 
sess into such social schemes as it seems to me 
are best in our human conflict with Nature. On 
such schemes I have already touched. I should 
be one of those on account of whose doings one 



228 PILGRIM PAPERS 

might well conceive our good fathers to turn in 
their graves. And so far as I am concerned, 
they may turn yet. 

But not just yet. I passed, as a result of en- 
vironment, from Protestantism pure and simple 
to that very perplexing form of religion known 
popularly as High Church Anglicanism. As a 
minister of that religion I came to the Berg, and 
most of my letters have been concerned with my 
doings in connection with it. And what shall I 
say of it? Nothing harsh, hope, for the faith 
of Pusey and Keble has given me great 
moments, and in their company at times I had 
all but thought that I saw the city of God on 
earth. Even now, it is hard to turn away from 
the hope they held out. With all its difficulties 
and anachronisms and unrealities, there is a 
life, it seems to me, in this form of religion, and 
a beauty that shall ever, I pray God, make me 
tender towards the friends of the past years. 
But I have made up my mind on the Berg that 
it is not the true Vision that floats before our 
eyes, but a mirage, only to be glimpsed at times 
and never to be reached. To have stumbled 
towards it across the arid sands is all part of 
the discipline of life, but there is only one thing 
for a traveller to do when he realizes that a 
mirage is but a mirage, if he would have hope of 
life. He must turn his back upon it. 

To you, friend and more than friend, I have 
written of these things. It helps to write to a 



OF CONCLUSIONS 229 

friend. To you, who say that you have learned 
of me, and who therefore have a right to it, I 
have made this apologia, poor thing though it 
be. What it may mean to us both, who can say? 
It is a hard and cruel old world, as a friend of 
mine says, half in ridicule, but we have to live 
in it. It may hold nothing for either of us, but 
I love its many beauties, its tangled problems, 
and its bewildered children, and am very con- 
scious that, whatever God there be, a sword is 
set in the hand of each of us. To keep the blade 
untarnished and to do some work with it is the 
most that any man can hope for. Nor do I 
think that that Vision is ever likely to fade 
from my eyes, or you from my thoughts, and, 
for weal or woe, I am very glad of both. 



26. OF THE RAINBOW'S END 

I THOUGHT that I had written my last 
letter to yon from the Berg, my dear, but so 
lovely and wonderful a thing happened this 
morning that I must write again, even although 
I am not now upon the Berg at all. It came 
about in this way. 

You will remember that I have written to you 
several times of the wonderful cloud scenery 
along the border, how one is often above the 
clouds in the sun while they wash around the 
mighty summits of this huge and rocky barrier. 
Well, last night I slept for the last time up here. 
I should have liked that my last night had been 
spent under the stars round a camp fire and far 
from any one, but that could not be, and I slept 
at the store that stands just at this "gate" 
down to the plains below. From the stoep one 
could shoot an arrow across the border and out 
into the void, where it would fall several thou- 
sand feet, most likely, before it struck the lower 
and more gradually sloping face of the Berg. 
In the morning I woke early and got up at 
once for a last early morning up here. I went 
out, and then I stood transfixed. Often as I 
have seen it, the beauty of the mist to-day 

230 



OF THE RAINBOW'S END 231 

almost made me hold my breath. The still 
white sea rolled up nearly to my feet; indeed, 
in a little I walked to where it did lap my feet. 
To the horizon ahead it stretched, a tossed, 
tumbled, breaking, but all nnmoving ocean of 
cloud. As I had seen before, so now it gathered 
about the krantzes like foam on the edge of the 
ocean; cloud spray dashed up against the rocks, 
cloud spume running up the fissures. You 
really cannot picture its beauty. For the glori- 
ous sun shone on it all, warm and bright in the 
early morning, and about me birds twittered, 
and the green lands on our side rolled down to 
a little stream and up beyond to the still higher 
peaks. 

So much I had seen before, but this morning 
I did a new thing. I stepped down into the sea. 
Very cautiously I climbed down the steep, pre- 
cipitous descent, until, in a few moments, I was 
submerged. I felt like a sea-king in the 
"Arabian Nights" returning to his home. 
Literally, one moment my head was out of the 
"water," and the next I could not see a dozen 
yards for clinging, wet, vapoury cloud. But I 
climbed on down, and then, after a very few 
minutes as it seemed to me, I emerged below 
that ocean. And I just sat down and gasped 
with astonishment. 

Far, far below lay another world. It was 
dullish and grey, but I could see stunted trees 
and huts and cattle and even tinv tots of horse- 



232 PILGRIM PAPERS 

men. Just above my head, so near that I could 
lift my hand and touch it, was the sky of that 
world. It stretched to the horizon before me, a 
proper cloudy sky, but it reached to my hand 
where I sat. I stood up, held up my hands, and 
leaned a little forward over the world below. I 
was Atlas, holding up the sky. 

I remember I laughed, and my laugh seemed 
to be blanketed in the sky that I was touch- 
ing. I laughed because it was a fairy story 
come quite true. Why, as a child, how often I 
have wanted to go far, far out and touch the 
sky, and how often to find the rainbow's end! 
As I grew up they told me it could not be done. 
I suppose they thought it could not quite hon- 
estly. But I had done it ; I had wandered many 
years and very far first; but I had done it at 
last. I felt like a god; I really did. 

Then I sat down again and thought. Down 
below the folk were getting up. Women were 
coming to their doors, and looking up at the sky 
far above them, and grumbling a bit because 
there was no sun again. Little children were 
waking up, and staring at the sky, and wonder- 
ing what in the world was beyond it, and asking 
questions, and being told maddening things that 
they really could not believe. And there was I, 
sitting in their sky, looking down upon them. 

I grew afraid as I looked at that dull world. 
It seemed so complete, so shut in, so normal, as 
I stared out at it, that I began really to wonder 



OF THE RAINBOW'S END 233 

if I was shut down there for ever, and if I 
should never see the smiling sun and my horses 
and Cyril and the good pasture lands again. So 
I turned and climbed quickly up and poked my 
head out once more. 

Coming back like that, the world above looked 
more beautiful than ever, and so shining and 
warm. I stretched my hands out to the sun, and 
grasped it. I picked a bunch of little wild 
flowers. 

You will not think me foolish, dear, will you? 
It did happen just exactly like that ; I have not 
exaggerated one bit. It is all over and past 
now, that wonderful morning hour, but I think 
God must have given me such a last vision out 
of the very bottom of His kind Heart. For 
more is over than the morning, as you will know 
from my letters, and I am indeed down from the 
Berg, exiled, a wanderer, in a strange country. 
But — is it not strange? — you remember my 
first letter, a quite honest and frank first letter, 
in which we talked of travel and I told you that 
at the journey's end I believed one would 
always find a friend? Well, of course, I know 
now. I know what is beyond the lowering grey 
clouds, and I do not think they will ever daunt 
me more. The way may be long, and it may be 
wearisome, but I shall walk as one who has seen. 
For beyond the sky of our silly human seeing is 
a fair, smiling land to which we shall come hand 
in hand one day. You may be surprised, but I 



234 PILGRIM PAPERS 

shall not be, when we look round and see how 
sweet and familiar it all is. Why, you will say, 
"This is the very land we loved. in our dreams 
when it seemed impossible that the least of 
them should come true!" And we shall stretch 
our hands out in the warm sunshine and grasp 
it and laugh at each other. And we shall wan- 
der over the green turf towards the clear water, 
and I promise you we will pick a bunch of the 
white and blue and gold and crimson flowers at 

the rainbow's end. 

# # # # # 

Down below the folk will be waking, and the 
children getting out of bed and running to the 
window, and (just as we used to do) they will 
ask what is up there. The grown-ups will say, 
"Heaven, dear!" 

"And what is Heaven like, Mummy?" one 
will ask, and Mummy will say, you can be very 
sure, for years and years and years to come, 
"Oh, I don't know, child. Don't ask so many 
questions!" 



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